


Dead Letter

by Guede



Series: Dead Men Tell No Tales [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - No Werewolves, Amorality, BAMF Stiles, Bondage, Cock & Ball Torture, Cock Warming, Crack, Dark Stiles, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub Undertones, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Forced Orgasm, Humiliation, Incest, Intercrural Sex, Japanese Rope Bondage, M/M, Medical Kink, Mind Games, Multi, Nipple Torture, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Overstimulation, Past Torture, Piercings, Predicament Bondage, Rough Sex, Sensory Deprivation, Sex Toys, Shaving, Sounding, Stockholm Syndrome, Tattoos, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 19:13:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5754976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Peter discovers the cure to boredom, and a few other things, is letting Stiles work him and Derek in and out of kinky sex while they’re killing their way around the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note warning tags. Darkfic.

“Come on, Peter, you can do better than that,” Stiles tells him.

He could, he thinks, watching the ceiling fade in and out of focus. He could, of course he could, if he weren’t chained to a bed. Hasn’t been chained to it for hours at this point, his arms straining towards either bedpost till they’ve gone half-numb; he can feel the mechanics of his muscles still trying to pull at his bonds but it’s feeling the same way as a gunshot on TV is hearing. Distant, separated, having nothing to do with him, really.

A hand wipes some of the sweat from his brow, sweeping down past his temple to push it back into his already soaked hair. He turns into the touch, seeing but blind, hopelessly seeking some kind of compassion that he already knows isn’t coming, even before Stiles touches the vibrator back to his nipple.

Peter lost his voice a while ago. He can’t beg. He wants to, wants badly to even if he knows it’s pointless, wants to at least know he can _try_ , but all that comes out of his mouth is a harsh rush of air, tearing past his lips as he twists feebly from that damnable buzzing tip. It’s soft rubber, doesn’t hurt, or at least it wouldn’t if his nipple hadn’t long since devolved into a dense knot of exquisitely fiery pain. But it has, and so the vibrator is sending pulses of lightning through his poor, overworked body, pulses that are followed by brutal aftershocks that spiderweb out over his chest and down his belly, even reaching into his shivering back.

He thinks for a second that maybe his nipple’s actually been liquefied by the relentless attention. It feels like he has a huge, and still spreading, circle of pain radiating out over his chest, like Stiles has finally toyed with him just a little too much and he’s gone from shattered to just—gone.

“Come on, Peter,” Stiles whispers to him. One hand curling under his lolling head, lifting it. “Come on. Just one more. You’ve got it, I know it, and I want it. One more.”

Hot, soft lips press tenderly to his brow and Peter makes one of the few noises left to him, a thready, fatal whine. He’s sagging even as Stiles props him up, his head sliding across Stiles’ cheek. His eyes are tilted towards himself and he can’t help but look and no, no, his nipples are still intact. Inflamed, terribly sore just to _look_ at, raw and puffy around the cool metal bisecting each of them, but intact.

The vibrator, which is an offensively cheerful pink, circles his nipple and Peter sucks in his breath, pulling his chest in and away from it. Stiles laughs at him, fingers laddering up and down Peter’s neck in a rough massage. They’re fingers Peter has seen break spines—he doesn’t even remember this, wasn’t out of the car yet, but every time Stiles pulls his head back, Kate Argent’s dying eyes flash across his mind.

He knows that Stiles knows that. The way Stiles always knows to kiss him right then, right as the light finally goes out of her eyes, hard and hungry, reminding him whose hands really made that happen. Whose hands are holding him now, breaking him just as easily, that’s how he knows. 

Stiles laughs again, pulling back. He nips at Peter’s lower lip, then kisses the side of Peter’s jaw, a light, smacking tease that stirs a desperate, hopeless whine out of Peter. “One more,” he says again, dropping lower.

Peter wrenches at the chains. He doesn’t have the strength for it, only ends up flat under the other man, forcibly limp as Stiles huffs over his other nipple. Which is worse than the vibrator, worse because it’s so gentle and at this point Peter’s body expects nothing but pain and he can’t adjust, can’t dial down his reactions, can’t just accept the relief. The touch of air sends just as much of a juddering, clawing hurt through him, except his trembling body has nothing to push back against. It’s just air, after all.

“I’m not stopping till I get it,” Stiles says. He kisses the nipple, kisses it slow and soft, like he’s apologizing, and Peter racks out a dry, broken sob from somewhere, because that apology’s sharper than a stiletto between the ribs. 

Stiles shushes him, hands petting over his thighs, drawing up so close to the other raw, overmilked part of Peter’s body. So close and then away, away, even as Peter cries, pleas he can’t voice cramming up in his throat. A curious tongue swirls over Peter’s nipple, dips under the ring and then pokes through it, lifting it and Peter’s flesh is so sensitive now that he thinks he can feel every muscle in his chest going taut from that minute tug. The lightning’s bolting through him constantly now, not a web so much as a storm, shaking him to and fro like a rag doll as it gathers through his back, sinks into his belly and groin.

“Peter,” Stiles says, tongue hooking the nipple ring up. “One more. Come on, Peter, one more.”

And something breaks. There wasn’t anything left but Stiles found something. He always finds something, always finds one more, and it breaks and Peter comes. Too exhausted to move with it, too tired to even scream. Just a ragged gasp, following the snap of his muscles on down his body as he quivers in place, haphazard spasms taking over different parts of him.

It goes on so long. So excruciatingly long, Peter can’t—he can’t, he absolutely can’t, and yet he can’t stop it, can’t flee from it. He has to lie there and take it. Lie there and shake and feel it, feel himself failing.

Feel the hand on his face, the mouth on his lips. “Good,” Stiles croons. “Good, Peter, good, all right. You can stop now.”

Peter can’t even cry. He sags under Stiles’ mouth, slipping straight into blissful unconsciousness.

* * *

They’ve been living life in pieces and set-ups for years now. Hazards of being assumed dead and hunted by everyone with a grudge and an Argent’s phone number, you can’t really expect to have much continuity between your moments of terror. But it’s not till Stiles opened that car trunk that Peter thinks he truly gave up on trying to predict where he’d land next.

“Okay, there we go,” Stiles says, wiping a smear of yogurt off Peter’s lip. “Good. Can’t have you croaking like a frog next week, gives people a bad impression.”

He puts the glass down and picks up the ointment again, dabbing it carefully over the untreated half of Peter’s nipple. Peter can’t help shifting his knees, he’s still so sensitive, but Stiles has this way of changing his touch. Just the touch itself, somehow, one swipe being intensely sexual, and then the very next feeling like he’s wiping filthy trash off himself.

Stiles is being clinical right now, all quick, emotionless steel, and so his ministrations, while uncomfortable, are just tolerable enough that Peter almost wants to press into his hand. He salves the nipple, cleans his fingers off, and then picks up the gauze square and the surgical tape. Efficiently plasters over the spot, making it match the other side of Peter’s chest, and then he gets to his feet. His hand trails back through Peter’s hair as he walks behind Peter, suddenly affectionate, and Peter feels a little dizzy as he nuzzles after it, raspy whimpers dribbling from his mouth.

“I said stop that,” Stiles says. He pulls Peter’s hair, just this side of rough, and then spreads his fingers down to massage at Peter’s scalp. “Quiet time till you get your voice back.”

“Good luck with that,” Derek mutters.

He’s slouching in the kitchen chair across from Peter. Handcuffed with his arms behind him, but fully dressed, aside from the open fly that’s letting his balls and caged cock hang out of his jeans. Stiles glances at him and Derek stiffens warily, but still rolls his eyes.

“Even if he gets his voice back in time, he’s still going to sound like hell,” Derek adds. “Shouldn’t you have thought of that before you scheduled that meeting?”

Derek has a strange, almost idiot savant read on Stiles these days, just enough to keep on the savage side of the man’s sense of humor, but Peter still can’t help glaring at his nephew. He’s spent so long shepherding Derek around their various enemies that he supposes it’s habit, to try and head off his self-destructive tendencies. God knows it’s not because Peter ever thinks it’ll really _work_.

“Well, if that happens, then maybe I’ll just put you on the line,” Stiles says, snickering. He comes back over and grabs the glass of yogurt from the table. Holds onto it while he reaches down and pulls at Derek’s ball piercings, twisting and pinching them till Derek, groaning, has slid as far down the chair as his cuffs will let him, legs spread, head back to stare up at Stiles with glazed-over eyes. “See if your little asshole act gets us anywhere. God knows everybody seems to think you’re scarier.”

“Yeah?” Derek says, breathless, twisting his hips up into Stiles’ hand. He hikes his knees apart a few more inches. Gets his legs around the corners of the seat, hooks his feet about the chair legs to keep himself spread. “Jesus, why?”

Stiles tips his head, looking down Derek. And Peter looks too. Because even aching and chafed, kneeling on the floor with the leather cuffs on his wrists being the _least_ of his bonds, Peter does enjoy a good view. And his nephew, whatever his other deficiencies, has always been that. Derek used to fight it, used to hate it when people looked at him, looked and looked and looked all over that handsome face, that deliciously cut body, like it was a point of pride to not bother using what nature gave him.

But he’s gotten over that, mostly. Stiles got him over that. Taught him to lay himself out like that, like the cuffs are what are keeping him from total surrender, from just dropping on his knees and looking up with those pretty eyes and giving up everything before he’s even been asked.

Peter would usually be jealous. Maybe some part of him, which still remembers life on their own, still remembers when he alone could manage that, _is_ jealous. Deep down, buried under layers and layers of misdirection and lies.

If it is, it’s not that well-hidden. And it doesn’t last either. Not past Stiles turning around and seeing him. Stiles laughs, gaze sweeping over Peter, seeing it all and then some, and by the time he’s squatting in front of Peter again, it’s gone. And Peter’s left just as badly off as Derek, just as much of an open banquet, staring up and hoping, God, that Stiles decides to pick him up and take a bite.

“I said quiet, Peter,” Stiles mock-sighs. He cups his hand under Peter’s jaw, then tips another couple of swallows of yogurt into Peter. “You’re too fun to toss out with the trash yet, so gotta make you last, you know.”

This time he licks the yogurt off Peter’s lips, his hand slipping down to curl around the side of Peter’s neck. He slides his thumb up the center of Peter’s gorge, pressing just enough to make Peter clear his throat, and then rubs it affectionately along Peter’s jawline. Squats down more, putting the glass aside, and tightens his grip as he picks up the unlocked cage and Peter whimpers, seeing it.

“Nah, calm down, I said you’re off playtime for now,” Stiles says. He uses the edge of the cage to push down the waistband of Peter’s boxers, then catches the elastic on the back of his hand, holding it away as he sets the cage around Peter’s cock. “Just, I know you, I know you can’t keep off even if I tie you up. So just think of it as a little help, keeping you from hurting yourself. Like those cones that they put on dogs to keep them from biting out the stitches.”

“You mean a cone of shame?” Derek says, snorting.

Stiles rolls his eyes. Slides his hand up the back of Peter’s neck, squeezing when he gets to the hairline, and then takes it away so he can close and lock the cage. “Don’t be sarcastic, Derek. Just because Peter can’t mouth off right now doesn’t mean I need a stand-in.”

He works Peter’s cock back into the boxers, then pulls up the waistband. The cage is one of those metal tubes, solid from groin up to cock head, and it weighs Peter’s cock down, makes it push into the boxers. Peter hasn’t worn clothes all week anyway and it’s like he forgets the feel of them when Stiles makes him go that long, so when they go back on, they’re a strange new restriction he can’t get used to.

Peter shifts and his newly-weighted cock shifts in the boxers, pressing the chafed head into the silk. The cage doesn’t cover that and he can feel it, feel every fiber like it’s a separate thread being dragged over his raw cock head, and he can’t help shifting again. Biting back his moan, because Stiles is standing over him, watching him with cool, measuring eyes, but he has to squirm, has to move.

“You’ll deal,” Stiles finally says. When he reaches down, getting Peter to his feet, Stiles puts his hand under Peter’s arm and under Peter’s crotch, deliberately crushing the boxers up against Peter’s balls, which are also tender and unprotected.

He squeezes them lightly, making Peter worm and sink down against his hand, and then lets go. Turns Peter around, grabbing Peter’s cuffed hands instead, and pulls them up to stand in front of Derek, who’s still slumped over but whose arms and shoulders are straining against the cuffs, so much that the points of his shoulders are jutting forward like spearheads.

“So pretty like this,” Stiles says to Peter’s nape. Arm wrapped around Peter’s waist, as much supporting him as confining him, hand tugging the cuffs so Peter’s arms wrench further behind his back. “All banged and taped up, can’t say a word, he’s pretty, isn’t he? Derek? You gotta have seen him like this before, running around together?”

Derek hisses, flash of anger going across his face, like every time Stiles brings up that part of their past. It’s strangely endearing, his protectiveness, as much as it is infuriating since Peter thinks a good half of those times could’ve been avoided or lessened if his niece and nephew had just _listened_ to him.

But Derek keeps his head today. Just glowers, twisting in his cuffs, and then he tilts his head back, right as Stiles is bending Peter over. “Yeah,” he says, pupils blowing out under Peter’s face. “Yeah. Not all at the same time, but…yeah.”

“Your pretty uncle, all messed up,” Stiles coos, and even with the cage, even with the memory of that last vicious, dry orgasm still shaking his knees, Peter can’t help a buck of his hips. “So give him a kiss, Derek. Gotta give him something till we get back.”

“God, _fuck_ ,” Derek rasps, shuddering, his own bound cock slapping against his thigh, just before he lunges up for Peter’s mouth.

Stiles gives them that now. Before he and Derek go, before he stuffs Peter back wherever he feels like to wait out the agonizing hours alone, with just an earpiece and maybe, if he’s in a good mood, a grainy video feed, for reassurance. He gives them this kind of moment, this frantic, heated touch. One last thing to break, before he goes.

* * *

It’s one of the shorter absences. Barely a couple hours, and most of that is because Stiles pulls the car over after the job’s completed and fucks Derek up against a tree, from the sound of things. Peter still counts every second of it, curled up in the walk-in closet with his hands clipped to the handle of Stiles’ luggage, hanging on to every scrap of sound he gets.

He hates being alone. Derek thinks it’s all down to Deucalion’s little mindgames, separating them, moving them around like chesspieces and using their alive or dead status like poker chips. That and Laura panicking once, packing up and taking Derek with her and not bothering to check if Peter was going to come or not.

Those certainly didn’t help, but Peter hated being alone long before anybody even died. Hated it with a passion, made friends with people he would otherwise cheerfully—and in fact, sometimes did—see dead to avoid it. Fucked his own niece for the company.

Well. Laura was more complicated than that, but not being alone was a driving motivation. Not that Peter is ever going to bother explaining that to either of them. They both have their ideas of what happened, and he knows his sister’s children well enough to know it really doesn’t matter what the truth is, after a certain point. They don’t need to know now, anyway, they’ve all managed to get by without knowing it, so no point in ruining things. For once. And anyway, they wouldn’t understand. They had a large, close family before all of this, and even after that went up in flames, they had somebody. If Derek wasn’t with Peter, he was at least with Laura, somebody who could keep him from derailing, and that’s gone a long way towards Peter and Laura’s own reconciliation.

It wasn’t just some matter of not fitting in either, not wanting what your parents wanted for you. Peter’s never cared much for people’s intrinsic opinions of him, and of what he should do and want and be. He understands why it was such a problem for Laura, because Talia was, after all, his sister as well as her mother, but it just wasn’t his problem. It wasn’t that, and it wasn’t anything as easy as some childhood trauma where he was accidentally left behind, anything as simple and moralistic as that. His parents were good parents, while they were alive. Talia had been a good sister. He still misses her, to be honest.

He just hates being alone.

When Peter starts hearing noises outside as well as noises through his earpiece, he drags his aching body across the closet. He could’ve done that at any time. The luggage isn’t that heavy, even if he’s barely capable to holding himself off the floor. Perhaps he could have even tried to force the door.

He didn’t, he doesn’t. When Stiles unlocks and swings it open, Peter is as close to the other side of it as he can get, but he kneels there, whining, and waits for the man to dump his nephew on him. Derek’s filthy, clothes torn and smeared, pine needles still falling out of his hair, and he sprawls against Peter like somebody shot out all of his joints. Stiles has to peel his clothes off for him, and when he’s finally naked, hauling himself by inches around Peter, his bare cock grazes Peter’s knee and they both wince.

“I don’t think he’s gonna be much good either,” Stiles notes, taking out Peter’s earpiece. “Though you’re still on ice, so just as well.”

Stiles walks away. Derek presses closer, rubbing his thighs around Peter’s leg even as he hisses and arches, trying to keep his own cock off. Peter can’t even think about fucking without flinching right now, so he doesn’t take offense. But he wants, needs to feel Derek’s weight on him. Feel the man’s real, feel and smell and taste him. Feel that he’s back.

They curl up against the luggage, tucked around each other, while Stiles moves around the other room. Derek slides his hands into Peter’s boxers and cups Peter’s buttocks, keeping them flush, and Peter buries his nose and mouth in his nephew’s throat, sucking whenever Derek groans. Peter hates being alone, and he hates being left, but these days, when they go, he waits for them. He’d wait even if Stiles didn’t tie him up and make him. And that was the worst part of being alone. That was why he never bothered with it before.

That’s what Stiles made him, makes him do. Not the waiting, but tolerating it. Liking it. Craving it, even. He hates it when he’s actually waiting, but when he’s not, when he’s actually got them with him, he thinks about when he didn’t. And it makes everything so much better, he almost, _almost_ wishes he were waiting again, just looking forward to it. It’s maddening, the constant back and forth between the two, maddening and disorienting and exhausting.

Peter thinks he hates it. He wishes he could settle for one or the other, could simply catch his damned breath for once. And then, just when he’s decided to do that, Stiles opens that door, pulls him out or puts him in, and it starts over again and Peter just can’t.


	2. Chapter 2

Peter can’t fuck for a few days. Stiles takes off the cock cage after the first, once they’ve switched locations again and he sees that Peter has no immediate interest in crawling out of the giant California King mattress the new place has, and just keeps Peter’s hands tied. If Peter really wanted to, he could contort around and touch himself—he’s done it for Stiles before—but he’s so sore now, he thinks his body could just lie in this one spot forever.

And Derek’s just as bad. Stiles actually had to tweeze splinters out of his cock and balls, and put off shaving him that week, no matter how irritating Derek is about it. “It fucking itches,” Derek mutters, grinding himself half-heartedly into the sheets. “Come on. You know what I mean.”

“I do, and that’s why he leaves us the oil,” Peter mutters, typing away at his phone.

He’s sore and worn-out, but even if his body can rest, his mind can’t. He can’t fuck, Derek can’t fuck, so he doesn’t know what Stiles has been doing. He knows the man’s been prepping for the next meeting, he’s been lending a hand with some of the intelligence-gathering, but other than that he doesn’t know what Stiles is up to and that still bothers him.

“Doesn’t help that much.” Derek stops humping the bed and grunts into it instead, resting on his bound hands. Then he drags his head up. He watches Peter for a few seconds before sighing and crawling over, as much as the leashes on their wrist-cuffs will allow. “Can’t you just take a break?”

“No,” Peter says.

 _Yeah, back in Paris,_ Laura’s texted him. _So Chris came up to meet us. I don’t think he does that a lot._

Derek puts his head back into the bed. “You know they’re never going to tell us everything.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that,” Peter snaps. _was lydia expecting him?_

 _Give me a break, like he’d be stupid enough to not give her notice._ Laura tacks on one of her ridiculous smileys to the end, as if she and Derek are secretly coordinating efforts to aggravate him. _Chris wants you to know he thinks I’d enjoy him eating me out more if I wasn’t texting at the same time. We’ll be here for a week, Lydia says. Kthxbye._

Peter stares at his phone for a moment. He gets halfway through a reply, reconsiders, gets halfway through _that_ reply, and then just gives up and tosses the phone down. Even if he managed to craft the perfect, utterly cutting response, it’s no good if Laura doesn’t read it till tomorrow. And unlike her brother, she is capable of and willing to ignore him.

“You still sound like shit, you know,” Derek says.

When Peter looks at him, Derek just looks back, brows slightly raised. Then looks down Peter’s body. His eyes linger on the gauze taped over Peter’s nipples, and it’s all in Peter’s imagination but it’s no less painful when Peter feels phantom fingers pinching at them. A hiss slips out of Peter’s mouth and Derek’s brows rise higher.

The other man puts his head down on his cuffs. He keeps moving his eyes down Peter, trailing over Peter’s belly till he gets to Peter’s cock, soft against the sheets but it’s almost as flushed as it would be when hard. Dark pink against the white linen, pink and chafed and just Derek’s gaze alone makes Peter twitch his thighs, almost want to roll over and cover up himself.

Derek drags his eyes back up, catches Peter’s. He snorts, then shifts his head on his hands. Makes that a body-long roll, from his shoulders down his back to his ass. He’s got his own marks. All those scratches from the tree bark, and then the perfect pair of black-blue stripes across his buttocks, like Stiles marked them out with painter’s tape before running a brush over them.

His nephew’s come a long way. Still a sullen, self-destructive shit, but he’s got some polish now, some idea of his own power, and Peter can’t resist that even as he shakes his head at the other man, crawling over till they can just lie alongside each other. The leashes stretch far enough for that and no further, just enough to touch shoulders and hips and, when Derek cranes over, his mouth to Peter’s jaw.

“You know she’s just going to make fun of you,” he mutters. “She thinks you’ve got some crush on Chris now.”

“Of course Laura does,” Peter says. He does sound bad, like somebody ran his voice through an industrial shredder. And his throat aches too, that pointed ache that digs in with every swallow. He could crawl back to the other side of the bed, reach for the smoothie Stiles has so considerately left them—on a bowl of ice, even—but he stays with Derek. “And you?”

“Honestly? A little, when I first heard about him. But I thought about it, and now I think if you’re going to start making me jealous again, you could do better,” Derek says. He smiles at Peter, sharp as a knife under those heavy-lidded eyes, so sharp that Peter has to swallow just to check that the edge isn’t to his own throat, and then leans over for another whispering kiss. “Stop freaking out. He’s making us do that, you know that, right?”

Peter rolls his eyes, even as he’s turning his head, angling his chin up to lessen the distance for Derek. “Yes.”

“Well, then relax,” Derek says. “He’ll come back with whatever job and we’ll go again.”

“I wish you wouldn’t just assume things,” Peter says after a second. “You should know by now what happens when we get comfortable.”

Derek pulls back. He’s annoyed, enough so that he twists on his leash, and then he shrugs it off. Pushes back up against Peter, grinning for blood when the rock of the mattress slides Peter’s cock around under him, making him wince. “You think this is comfortable?” he says, and moves the bed again. “Give me a break, Peter. He’s going to shoot us or he’s going to fuck us. I don’t know why you always have to come up with a zillion other ideas when it just comes back to that.”

His hip bumps Peter, hard, and Peter hisses again. Then, fed up, hauls himself up onto his knees and works himself away from the other man. “If you think I want a fuck right now, you can go scrape your dick off on another pine tree,” he snaps.

“So what, you want him to shoot you instead?” Derek says, looking after him. He stops moving and just hangs from his leash, letting his legs sprawl across the bed. Then he laughs at Peter. “Come on. Just come back here and take a nap, Peter. He comes to shoot us, I promise I’ll wake you up first.”

Peter glowers at him for a few minutes, crouched up by the footboard. In that position a whole new set of aches awaken, spreading painfully down his thighs and then angling up into his groin. He fumbles around on his ass a bit, aware of how awkward he looks, of how Derek’s watching, and then he gives in with what little grace is still left to him.

“What _is_ your problem, anyway?” Derek murmurs as Peter slides back down beside him. He nestles his head back down on his cuffs, unresisting, not actively seeking to push them together. Letting the slope of the bed do that for him, like a sensible person. “I thought you kind of liked this, for once.”

“‘Liked’ is such a weak, simple word,” Peter says, pushing his face into the bed. He breathes like that, suffocating himself, and then sighs and turns to look at the other man. “I don’t know.”

Derek would’ve demanded to know what Peter didn’t know, once upon a time. Or would’ve been angry but silent, storming off to create a fresh round of trouble for them. Or just plain angry. Always staring from the side, he’d been as a child. Never quite understanding what was going on, or why he wanted to know about it, but understanding quite well how much he resented them all for putting him in that position. He’s always had a very well-developed sense of injury, Derek.

“So go to sleep,” is what this Derek says, with a shrug and then a shift of his leg to put their thighs flush. “Bug Stiles about it when he gets back.”

Peter sighs. “I wish I knew what he was doing.”

“No, you don’t,” Derek says, laughing at him again. “Jesus, Peter, just put your head down for once. Just try it, okay?”

There’s really nothing else to do, Peter has to admit, and so, as instructed, he puts his head down.

* * *

“So, this meeting,” Stiles says.

He’s dressing Peter for it. They’re in the bathroom. It’s one of those high-end fetish residences that Stiles seems to find tucked up behind every wealthy resort area, and so it comes with conveniently-positioned hooks and rings should one of its patrons want to tie another’s hands over their head with supple, buttery black, custom-fit leather cuffs. Peter’s on his knees, as usual, and more leather wraps his ankles to a bar that keeps his legs generously spread.

Stiles starts with his cock, delicately smearing ointments over its length, working it carefully into the skin of Peter’s groin, since he shaves Peter so often and the area is so easily irritated. Then he wraps gauze over Peter’s cock, head to base, with a few loops around Peter’s balls to anchor it, leaving just a little bare spot at the top so Peter can piss without staining the bandages. The wrapping’s snug and Peter will feel it when he moves, feel it when Stiles, as he inevitably does, teases him, but Peter thinks it’s loose enough to let him come. If Stiles allows that.

“You’re never really independent these days. Too many governments with too many interests everywhere. But then, there aren’t really private wars either,” Stiles says with a shrug. He moves onto Peter’s nipples, salving them up as usual. But instead of the gauze squares, Stiles picks up a roll and then binds a three-inch section of Peter’s chest, right over the nipples. It’s a different type of gauze than what he used on Peter’s cock: much more finely-woven, soft as clouds. “Best you can do is try and keep on working terms with everybody, and keep off their burn lists. Which is actually easier than it looks, as long as you’re willing to put up with a lot of bullshit meetings like this one. Do a favor once in a while, for the right person.”

Once the gauze is tied off, Stiles smooths his hand absently across it. Absently, at least, in that he’s not looking at Peter when his fingers rub across one nipple, catching the ring a little. He does when Peter groans, groans and then arches, feeling the gauze tighten around his chest. Dark, hungry eyes paired with that distantly amused smile, like he’s remembering past meals as much as he’s contemplating his current one.

“You and Derek and Laura have started popping up on their radar, so we gotta make introductions,” Stiles says. He pats Peter’s nipple again, then puts both his hands on Peter, starting them at mid-ribs, just under the gauze wrap, and then dragging them to Peter’s hips. Curls his nails into the bone before hooking up. “Up.”

Peter bites back a grunt, pulling on the chain suspending his hands and then heaving his weight back towards his feet. He staggers up, feeling a tight burn in his shoulder sockets that spreads across his back and then down, and then almost trips as Stiles seizes the spreader bar. He hangs from the chain for a second, gasping, till Stiles knocks his feet back under him.

And, incidentally, uncuffs his ankles. Stiles snags over Peter’s boxers and then grasps Peter’s calves one by one, lifting and lowering them, and then he kneels at Peter’s feet and pulls the boxers up past Peter’s knees. He looks up at Peter, nothing but eager help in that face, and Peter shivers and whines, knowing how terrible a lie that is.

“You’re not going to panic or anything, are you?” Stiles says, as if he’s merely concerned. He gets to his feet, pulling the boxers with him. Rounds Peter’s buttocks with his hands before tucking them in, before sliding his hands to the front to do the same with Peter’s balls and cock. “’cause I know you Hales like your presumed dead lives and all, but that pretty much just works for amateurs, and even then, it is the Internet age and all. It’s a lot easier, and, in my opinion, a lot better to just go with the huge gaping black holes in the resume. They’re gonna know you, but they don’t have to _know_ you, you know what I mean?”

“Panic wasn’t on my mind,” Peter rasps. His voice is touch and go at this point. He thinks he could manage a little light conversation, with a soothing drink in his hand and another waiting for him, but he’s not so foolish as to ask for the help. “I was curious about what they’re to know about us.”

Stiles shrugs again. Gives Peter’s hips a firm pat before ducking back and pulling a pair of trousers, fresh from the tailor’s, out of a tissue-stuffed box. He checks for pins as he brings them over, then slips Peter into them just as carefully as he did with the boxers. “Whatever you feel like,” he says. “Lydia and I covered up your fuck-ups. We didn’t cover up your high school or your birth certificate, so I’d assume they have that kind of thing. You’ve all got pretty memorable faces.”

Peter smiles, and Stiles smiles back. And then holds the trousers to one side of Peter’s waist, with his other hand stuck deep into the open fly, cradling Peter’s cock that is twitching against its bandages. Sense memory’s making it react, the sense of Stiles’ fingers closing around him for other reasons; sense memory is making Peter shudder and twist, the slight restraint of the gauze more than enough to make his cock recall the unforgiving squeeze of metal and silicone.

“So pretty,” Stiles breathes, pressing close to him, teasing his mouth with hot breath. “So good, aren’t you, Peter? Good and trained now.”

“You saw to that,” Peter says. A moment later, well after Stiles has removed his hands, done up Peter’s fly, left him cooling in his bonds. And even then his voice is shaking, and it has nothing to do with the state of his throat. “Well, what would you like me to tell them?”

Stiles looks at him again. Sometimes Peter catches an odd flicker in the man’s eyes, not quite as reserved as the rest of the time. He’s judging them all the time, weighing and measuring and comparing, but it’s very rare that they actually get a hint of his conclusions, for all that neither Peter nor Derek will ever be able to hear the word ‘good’ again without feeling the lick of Stiles’ breath on their necks.

“I think you should tell them I keep you around for sex and conversation,” Stiles says. “That you’re a lawyer by training, and that you never did anything remotely like this before you ran into me. That you don’t do anything unless I’m there, holding you by the throat.”

He steps back to the boxes and pulls out a shirt and a tie for Peter. The tie he slings around his own neck, its muted dark blue pattern clashing horribly with his loud, burnt-orange plaid.

“That you’re just along for the ride,” he adds, unlocking Peter’s wrists. Then he steps slowly around Peter, giving Peter time to shake out the cramps in his arms. He holds up the shirt for Peter to put his hands back into the sleeves, then steps up against Peter’s back as he tugs it up over Peter’s shoulders, brings the halves forward and across Peter’s front. His breath puffs wetly, hotly, across Peter’s ear. “And hell, that’s you, and you’re the smart one. Derek’s just there because he can’t find anything else to do.”

“So you want me to tell the truth,” Peter says. He inhales as Stiles’ hands come within a hair of pressing over his nipples, and then ends up pressing himself up against them, exhaling as Stiles instead begins to button up his shirt.

Stiles rubs his cheek over the back of Peter’s head, then tucks his nose and mouth behind Peter’s ear. “Oh, come on. You know better than that.”

Peter watches the man’s fingers, lean, lightly callused, unerringly quick, work down his shirt, then rise to do up the top buttons. His eyes close and he lets himself slouch back into Stiles’ hold as his shirt-collar tightens across the front of his throat. “It’s _a_ truth.”

“I think it’s a pretty attractive one, for some people.” Stiles kisses his skin, openmouthed and sucking, and then Peter feels the whisper of the tie being threaded about his neck.

He breathes in again, letting the developing knot rise up against his gorge, and then sighs deeply as Stiles smooths the tie down his chest with one hand. That hand keeps moving, not settling till it’s folded over the top of Peter’s fly, and then it hooks a thumb into the waistband. Uses it to lever the trousers a little open—they are _very_ well-fitted—as Stiles uses his other hand to tuck in Peter’s shirt-tails.

“Thing is, Peter, they’re not going to believe you no matter what you say,” Stiles tells him. When the shirt’s taut across Peter’s belly, Stiles moves his hands to Peter’s arms. He starts at the elbow and then slides them down, off the sleeves and into the open cuffs, ringing Peter’s wrists right over the still-fading pressure marks. “We’re going to walk in and they’ll have your file. They’ll see who you were. Black market lawyer, hanging with smugglers and psychos, faking your own death even though you’ve got distant family scattered around. You fucked up with the Alphas, with the Argents, and they’ll see that and they’ll see you and me, and you know what they’ll see?”

The feel of something tightening around his wrists makes Peter open his eyes. He’s expecting metal or leather, but they’re just his shirt-cuffs, pinched between Stiles’ fingers. He takes a deep breath, deep enough that the gauze wrapped over his nipples actually cuts in, and Stiles lets go of the cloth. Manipulates them instead to get in the cuff-links, fasten them, so the cuffs settle as heavily about Peter’s wrists as restraints would.

“They’ll see what you want,” Peter says. He takes another breath, feeling Stiles’ weight shift behind him. Looking at Stiles’ fingers closed over his sleeves. “Which is, they’ll see you falling for me.”

Stiles laughs, and locks his arms around Peter, pulling him up so close he almost doesn’t breathe. “You’re so good,” he says, kissing Peter’s jaw. “And they’re gonna wonder why you.”

Peter looks up, and then sees himself in the mirror. Good suit, handsome man, lovely youth wrapped around both. No reason why they wouldn’t buy it, he thinks. He used to, after all.

* * *

Derek’s not to come to this meeting, not even for back-up, and he’s good enough, Stiles thinks he’s patient and quick enough, for that now. He’s a little sullen about it on the drive over, because even if he’s not coming, he does get to leave with them.

“How long’s this going to take again?” he mutters, staring at the city passing outside the car windows.

“Don’t be that kid,” Stiles promptly says, just as Peter’s slotting a glare at his nephew. “I even left off the cage, Derek, don’t make me regret it.”

Derek rolls his eyes, and then again, when he sees Peter’s expression, but he shuts his mouth and just slouches in his seat. They take a meandering route, partly for security, but partly because they’re also dropping Derek off in a different neighborhood. One that’s full of bright, cheerful cafés and specialty boutiques, with streets crowded with laughing, buzzing people.

Peter almost risks asking Stiles to reconsider, because Derek has changed but Derek is not fundamentally different. He’s better at what he is, and what he is has never included that sort of socializing.

Thankfully, he recognizes one of the people on the street before he does. He’s still trying to formulate a new question when they pull over, and Chris Argent steps up and opens the passenger side door.

“I guess this isn’t that far from your place,” Derek says, looking up at him. “Laura got tired of you?”

“It’s about an hour and a half, and I think it was more that Lydia had out of town dinner reservations for two,” Chris says dryly. “Don’t worry, I’m not offended.”

Derek snorts, but he’s glancing back at Peter as he does. It’s a silly, thoughtless habit of his, when he does, in fact, know better, but Peter has to admit he still finds it flattering. He wonders sometimes that he missed it for so long, mistaking it for plain curiosity. That alone should’ve discouraged Derek, but it doesn’t, and Peter knows it never will.

“What, you scared of him or something?” Stiles says. He turns around and looks at Derek, then reaches back and grabs Derek by the jaw, just as Derek’s angrily jerked himself forward. Pulls Derek a little further up by that, then rubs his thumb under Derek’s chin so that Peter can see the skin flushing under the pressure. “This sort of shit’s always a little on the fly, so I want to know I can pick you up where I left you.”

“Yeah, fine,” Derek mutters. He twists his head up, fighting Stiles’ grip, and then hisses as Stiles finally releases him. Glances at Chris, snorts again, and then looks over at Peter. He’s looking for something, for some reason, and it doesn’t seem like he finds it, but in fact, he’s pleased by the absence.

He leans over and catches Peter’s mouth. Just Peter’s mouth, just that, but he’s all fever and hunger in that spot and it blows out of him like wildfire. They both moan, swaying back and forth, joined by their lips, and God, _how_ did Peter miss this?

Derek wrenches back. Pants a little, running his hand over his hair, and then grins as he slides out of the car. Violent and cocky, all teeth and loose shoulders, as he looks at Chris. “How much of a mess do you want him in, when you get back?” he says.

To Stiles, who doesn’t even bother to roll his eyes as he turns back to the wheel. “Don’t fight with your sister, Derek,” he says, mock-exasperated. “Peter’s going to be tired enough when we get back without your bullshit. Chris?”

Any other time, Chris is absurdly cool, sleek and still to the point that Peter might want blood out of him just for how unnatural it is, when they all know what really happens to them. But then Chris looks like a livewire when either Stiles or Lydia speak to him. “Yes?”

“Leave some for me,” Stiles says, starting the car back up.

They wind back into the busy traffic, heading back across town for the business district. It’s a fair night out and people are taking advantage of it; Peter notes that women’s skirt lengths seem to be dropping again, while he checks the newsfeed on his phone, sees if he’s got any new texts from Laura. He doesn’t so he sends her one, letting her know that Derek’s playing around with her new penpal.

“Not going to make a fuss?” Stiles asks.

Peter looks up. Almost asks for clarification, and then catches himself. He thinks back over the past few hours, then laughs under his breath. “What, about Chris? Hardly. Even if you two had left him capable of anything, he’s never even been close to Derek’s type. Derek doesn’t save men.”

“Derek never was much for saving women either, from what I can tell,” Stiles says. “He damn well wasn’t saving Kate Argent from anything.”

He’s hard to read anyway, but reduced to one hand and a pair of eyes in the rearview mirror, he’s more like a specter than a man. For a moment Peter contemplates trying to climb into the front seat, or at least getting down on the floor and kneeling over the gearshift. But no, that would be too—theatrical. It doesn’t fit Stiles’ tone; he’s not playing that way with Peter, not right now.

“You think he’d care if it was the other way around?” Stiles asks.

Peter frowns. “If I were paired up with Chris? He was always the one with a taste for Argent—well, him and now Laura, I suppose. And anyway, I think you’ve managed him out of that nonsense.”

“You noticed, huh,” Stiles says, laughing a little. His eyes dip away from Peter, in the mirror, and then look at something on the road behind them, so they’re not on Peter but Peter can see right into them. They’re interested but detached, observing only.

“I should thank you,” Peter starts.

“You gonna?” Stiles immediately shoots back.

Peter tenses. The gauze around his chest tightens and he thinks one of the rings shifts, and he has to bite back a moan into the bargain. The suit suddenly feels horribly constraining on him, like he’s been encased in immovable, inflexible metal. He’s halfway to removing a cufflink before he stops himself.

“Thank you,” he finally says, more quietly. “For dealing with that. I think…well, I know I wasn’t able to. And Derek was never going to get anywhere till he faced it.”

Stiles hums something under his breath. It’s a familiar sound, but several minutes go by before Peter places it as Laura’s ringtone. “You’re sweet,” Stiles says suddenly, and then they pull over.

They’re at the hotel for the meeting. It’s a less fashionable venue that makes up for the lack of celebrity with very discreet off-the-books services, the first of which comes up when the valet taking the car keys promptly turns them over to a figure in a featureless hazmat suit.

The second is the private elevator which takes them to their meeting room. Once they’re inside, Stiles presses a button and the elevator softly slows, then stops with the smallest jerk possible. Peter’s more jarred when Stiles spins him around and then catches him by his tie. Smiling at him, Stiles adjusts the knot the tiniest bit tighter, then fussily fixes various wrinkles and off-set seams in his suit.

“You know I didn’t do it for you,” he says to Peter.

“I still benefited,” Peter says with a shrug. “And it’s difficult, getting Derek to change his ways. I apprec—I admire the expertise, as well.”

Stiles pauses with one hand flat across Peter’s belly, the other sitting lightly on Peter’s upper arm. He smiles again, and leans forward so the lights catch his eyes, briefly fading them of everything but the sharpness of his gaze. “You _are_ sweet,” he says. “That’s new, but I think I like it. You can try a little less hard sometimes, you know. You’re going to wear out that gear if you leave it on all the time.”

His hand slides up Peter’s arm and over the shoulder, then along the side of Peter’s neck, slightly raising the collar he’s just settled. He creeps his thumb over Peter’s lower lip. Draws that down, just as Peter’s inhaling, and then slips something hard and oval into Peter’s mouth. Pushes Peter’s lip back up, holding it till Peter sucks on the thing: a cough drop, highly mentholated.

“I don’t want you to be bored,” Peter says, when Stiles’ thumb drops away.

Stiles pivots on his heel. He can be so careless with his movements, letting his arms swing like a gorilla, all flapping shirt and wrinkled sleeves, that people miss how graceful they are. How fatal.

“Trust me, Peter, if I was bored, I’d tell you,” he says. He puts his hand up on the small of Peter’s back as the elevator starts up again.

When they reach their floor, he ushers Peter out with a slight press of his fingers. His hand slides up Peter’s spine as they come into the room, till it’s lying directly on the gauze wrap, so every movement of his fingers flexes it. Makes the stuff tug and pull across Peter’s nipples, drawing slow but irresistible twinges with each shift. It’s better than a leash, better than chains. It feels like he has strings tied straight into Peter’s body, and Peter is only watching them twitch him to the table, lift his hand for the greetings, move his head and mouth as he smiles and introduces himself.

Peter hasn’t met professional operatives of this caliber before, but once the trappings are stripped away—better suits and watches, less so on the shoes, he’s interested to see—he finds very little difference between them and the scumfeeders and bargain killers he did work with, pre-Stiles. These people are just a little more softly-spoken.

They still look at him the same way. They like his face, patronize his words. One of them runs his eyes over Peter as if he’s stripping off the clothes, perhaps not for business reasons, and before Peter can decide on his own reaction, Stiles has dropped his hand onto Peter’s nape and pushed thumb and forefinger up the sides of Peter’s throat. It’s a display, as much as any support for a piece of pottery would be, and when Peter lets Stiles’ hand arch him, the man’s eyes go to Stiles and then, finally, warm.

The idea of Chris Argent screwing his nephew doesn’t bother Peter. He’s seen it before, he knows how blank Chris is behind the frantic lust, and he knows Derek would connect—has connected—better with the fear in his kills. And the idea of he, or Derek (or even Lydia, perhaps), having any sort of claim on Stiles is ridiculous.

So Peter’s not jealous, when he sees how the man is looking at Stiles. Jealousy would mean the man has something Peter wants, and Peter doesn’t have to know anything about him to know that’s not true. What Peter is—he’s disappointed, is perhaps the best word. They’re supposed to be professionals. They should be smarter than that.

They break temporarily so the others’ central command can be contacted to confirm a few details. Stiles steps to the doorway with one of the operatives, a woman, who’s spoken and looked the least of all of them, and chats easily with her about Russia and oil and body disposal.

The man who’d looked at Stiles approaches Peter now. “Interesting investment,” he says.

Peter raises his brows. “Yes?”

“I manage,” the man says. He’s friendly, but not warm. “It’s no different from any other portfolio, you know. Diversify, diversify, diversify.”

“Your commissions must make for an interesting tax return,” Peter says.

The man shakes his head, amused. “Don’t do commissions. It’s all your own assets up here, what you’re throwing around. You should keep that in mind.”

“I or we?” Peter asks.

“Well, that’s up to him.” The man cocks his head. “Isn’t it?”

He steps away and the others return. Stiles keeps his hands wrapped around his coffee as he sits down next to Peter. The room is chilled to the point of slight discomfort, and as the meeting wraps up, Peter finds himself shifting closer and closer to the other man. He can feel the lack of Stiles’ hand on his back like a patch of black ice amid fluffy snow, and it’s starting to make him shiver.

Stiles touches him as they stand and make their farewells, but it’s just a tap on the shoulder. The operatives file out and an attendant briefly enters, gathering up the used glasses and napkins, replacing the coffeepot, and then they leave, shutting the door behind them.

And Stiles has Peter on his knees the instant after. Peter almost chokes himself, exhaling in relief the same time that Stiles is wrenching his head back by his hair. The man walks around him, other hand fisted in the back of Peter’s suitcoat, then then lets go. But just so he can cup his hands over Peter’s shoulders, cup them and then drag them down Peter’s arms, bringing them behind him.

“You heard,” Peter manages.

“Oh, yeah. They’re dicks like that, can’t even bother to pull you totally out of earshot. I feel bad for Evelyn, she’s always getting saddled with cowboys,” Stiles says casually, confidentially. He noses in behind Peter’s ear as he speaks, then presses his teeth lightly to the skin there. Quiet for the moment he needs to slip a ziptie into Peter’s sleeves.

He doesn’t even take off the cufflinks. Once Peter’s bound, Stiles straightens up and drapes his arms over Peter’s shoulders. He walks his fingers down Peter’s chest, starting off featherlight and then pressing in harder and harder as Peter’s breathing goes uneven and rough, anticipating the moment when Stiles reaches his nipples.

Stiles digs his nails right on top of them, hard enough to make the edge come through the gauze, and Peter flinches back. Gets caught up against Stiles, shudders, and then feels the back of his head drag against Stiles’ shoulder as the man turns his fingers, rubs the soft pads down instead.

“They’ve still got video feeds here, you know,” Stiles tells Peter. He plucks at the nipples, lifting the rings slightly against the wrap, and then slides his palms down Peter’s belly. “Don’t fight. You’ll cut your wrists, I don’t want blood. You fight and I’ll let them watch me drug you.”

Peter groans. The ziptie hurts just when he clenches his fists, but he tries to hold his arms still. The suit helps with that, with the snug fit, the heavy cloth, the strong seams, and he concentrates on relaxing into its grip.

“Just pop another drop in your mouth.” Stiles kisses Peter’s neck, gently, while his hands roughly pull open Peter’s fly, push away the shirt-tails and haul out his cock. He wraps one hand around that, thumb nudging right against the head, and then rolls Peter’s balls in his other as Peter struggles to not twist against his grip. “You’d take it like a baby bird, wouldn’t you? Take anything from me. I could give you something and you’d take it and go right to sleep.”

Stiles does not do that, use drugs on them. That’s Lydia’s line, according to Laura, but Stiles seems to prefer to put them out the hard way, with pure exhaustion.

But when he says that Peter moans anyway, because he’s right. Peter moans, moans and parts his lips for a drop that’s not coming, because Stiles likes him conscious for this, likes him seeing and hearing and feeling every inch of what’s done to him. Likes him to know that he can’t use that excuse, that he just lies there and he takes it because he wants to.

“Maybe you’d wake up and they’d all be back here,” Stiles muses. He removes the hand from Peter’s balls. Keeps the one on Peter’s cock, but it doesn’t move except for the thumb, the only part that reaches past the gauze wrapping onto skin. And that sweeps back and forth, back and forth, teasing till precome’s soaking into the bandages, making Stiles tighten his grip to keep Peter from fucking into his hand. “Like I said, I do favors for them once in a while. You’d be a very pretty party favor, Peter. All tied out and opened up for them. Would you like that?”

Peter likes anything that the man offers them. It doesn’t matter whether Peter liked it before. When Stiles talks about it, the way he talks about it, Peter likes it.

“Or for the staff. They have to clean up a lot of shit around here, I bet they’d appreciate it if somebody left them a good tip for once.” Stiles’ free hand is suddenly sliding into the back of Peter’s trousers, working them away from Peter’s ass. His fingers are slick with lube and Peter’s tilting his ass for them even before they get between his buttocks. “Or, you know, _maybe_ I’ll just let them watch this.”

He sticks two fingers into Peter. They haven’t had sex in a week. Peter and Derek have, a couple times when one of them got too restless, but it’s just been tongues and one finger, at most. Stiles said no more than that and so they haven’t. So Peter cries out, cries out and shakes and feels that burning everywhere. Around Stiles’ fingers in his ass, in his raw throat, along the band clamping about his nipples, and straight down his cock. His cock that’s hardening, pushing up against the gauze that’s tight enough to make him whimper, not tight enough to stop his erection.

“Your pretty cock,” Stiles echoes, working Peter on his fingers. He’s still thumbing Peter’s cock slit, squeezing out precome and then massaging it around as Peter whines and bucks between his two hands, easing off one torture only to push straight into the other. “All over their monitors. Maybe they’ll screenshot it, use it for their computer. They’ll definitely stick it in your file, you know. Identifying marks, whatever. And they’ll watch, Peter. They’ll all watch, take notes, analyze the shit out of it. Figure out every second of you giving it up to me. Don’t you like that? Peter? Do you?”

His voice sharpens, he wants an answer. Peter drags his head around. Closes his eyes as Stiles flicks his fingers out of Peter’s ass, squeezing a buttock on the way to removing itself from his pants. “I don’t think—” he gasps as the hand relocates to his inner thigh “—you do.”

Stiles stills. He’s grinding down on Peter’s thigh with the heel of his hand, right where he placed the wolf-bite tattoo. It’s a reminder more than a toy; Peter’s not so sensitive as Derek about such things. But right then, with that hand there, and Peter’s ass still closing down against phantom fingers, it’s like he’s re-burning the tattoo into place. Peter should say something else, _needs_ to say something, with the way the other man’s silent, but all that’s coming out are desperate, rattled mewls.

“Very good, Peter,” Stiles says. He’s almost bland about it. “Yeah, I had those feeds cut before we got here. Violates hotel rules anyway, they’re gonna get it from management. The cowboys, anyway. Man, you know, I really don’t know why Evelyn keeps bothering with a team. Not like they ever give her a decent one.”

Then he flips them around. Peter lands on his back on the floor, legs sprawling, and the impact’s still shocking painfully up through his arms and shoulders when Stiles drops between his knees, holding his thighs apart.

“Besides, your cock’s still all raw,” he tells Peter, leaning down, letting his breath steam over Peter’s swaying erection. “Poor thing. I still have to keep it wrapped up, it’s not like they were going to get a real good shot of it. Now hold still. I can’t unwrap it, remember.”

He balances it between his hands and closes his mouth over it. Just the head, just the part that’s not covered in gauze. Peter bucks upward, straining on his elbows. His wrists hurt and he remembers about the ziptie, not cutting himself—he senses the reminder, it’s more like instinct than clear thought in his head—and he forces himself down. His hips keep moving but side to side, trying to bob his cock a little further into Stiles’ mouth.

Stiles sighs around him, which sends his head thumping back into the carpet, and then pins his hips in place. Sucks Peter, one strong suck after another, so close that Peter can’t catch his breath in between. When Peter comes, it hurts because he’s still trying to shudder up to the climax, and then he’s already flattened on the other side.

He gasps on the floor. He can feel the sweat sticking the suit to him, can feel a little drip of oily, melted ointment slicking out from his bandages and staining his shirt, his boxers. He lies there and Stiles walks around him. Cleans up the room, pulls open some drawers, takes things out. Comes back to Peter and redresses him, puts his clothes in order. Except now his tie is off, his shirt is unbuttoned to the gauze wrap, its wrinkles are left as-is. When Stiles pulls him back to his knees, Peter watches his shirt flap open and glimpses a hint of the rings through the gauze.

Stiles cuts the ziptie and lets Peter bring his arms around front. He has a skinny bruised line around each wrist, but the skin is unbroken; Stiles hums approvingly as he treats and then bandages them, and then uses the bandages to tie Peter’s wrists together in front of him. Peter’s cufflinks go into Stiles’ pocket as Stiles hauls him to his feet by his jaw.

They walk out that way. The private elevator means only a few hotel staff see—or would see, if their eyes didn’t slide past as if Stiles and Peter were made of glass. They’re such nonentities that Peter doesn’t feel humiliated, or proud, or anything, honestly, at passing by them. He’s still so dazed that he can barely focus on putting one foot before the other.

When the car comes up, Peter’s halfway inside before he realizes that it’s a different car. He starts, is caught back on Stiles’ hand, firmly on his nape, and then Stiles pushes him into the back and gets into the front passenger seat.

Derek’s there. He puts out his hand as Peter stumbles in. Not to steady Peter, but to tilt him so Derek can grab him better, and then pull him so they both go over, half-lying on the seat as Derek feverishly licks and sucks his way down Peter’s throat and chest, nuzzling into the unbuttoned shirt, starting to wet the gauze wrap over Peter’s nipples. He smells like blood—doesn’t feel like it, doesn’t look like it, when he rises up to pull open his jeans, but he reeks of it.

“Don’t take anything off till we get back,” Stiles says.

Peter grabs his nephew’s hair. The bandages around his wrists are already stretching; he half-moans, half-swears as he forces Derek’s head to his cock, using the sides of his hands instead of his fingers so he can press his wrists together, keep the gauze from tearing. “Did you kill somebody?” he gasps.

“Yeah,” Derek mutters. He shoves his hands into Peter’s pants, almost ripping them before he undoes the fly. Then he digs past the boxers. Grunts irritably, feeling the gauze on Peter’s cock, and then he shrugs and paws Peter’s clothes down till he can stick his head under that, fucking his tongue up towards Peter’s hole. “Laura didn’t say shit about that.”

“Don’t get jealous again, Derek,” Stiles says.

Peter feels Derek’s grunted reply against his hole and it makes him wrench over, forcing Derek completely off the seat for a moment. But Derek doesn’t swear, doesn’t even close his mouth: his tongue tracks down Peter’s thigh, then back up as he claws and pushes his way between Peter’s legs. He’s groaning and rocking against Peter, like he wishes he could just slice them both open and crawl into what’s left.

The frenzy’s familiar. But he wasn’t out with Stiles, he was out with Chris Argent, and for a second, even as Peter’s throwing his head back and riding Derek’s mouth, he’s angry. He _wasn’t_ jealous, didn’t even think of it, but—

But there’s Chris in the rearview mirror, all blank steel as he steers the car through the streets, and no, no, that wasn’t it. He didn’t do this to Derek. The kill didn’t do it; Derek’s enjoying his work a good deal more these days, but it’s not the work so much as what he gets after. And what he gets—

—what he gets, usually, is Peter. Desperate after waiting so long without them, eager, willing and welcoming to however they come back.

But this time he was the one waiting, Peter realizes. Waiting and watching. Derek might not have been tied up in a hotel room but they’ve always had different chains anyway. And this one, _this_ one, Peter didn’t even know was there, wouldn’t even have thought to pull it.

“I knew it,” Stiles says, laughing, and then Peter sees his silhouetted head lean towards Chris. “You better pick it up a little, or else they’re going to fuck up your car.”

Peter subsides on the seat, his hands dragging through Derek’s hair, Derek’s mouth working him over. It’s new, what Stiles is doing, but it’ll catch him round just as badly as the old. And God, but he craves that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The hotel, although set in France, is modeled after the Continental Hotel in _John Wick_. 
> 
> Evelyn is Evelyn Salt from the movie _Salt_.


	3. Chapter 3

They’re both only almost-healed, so Stiles is careful. Gives them their time to play and then pulls them apart. He takes out the padded cuffs, the ones that won’t leave ligature marks so much as wide bands of tender, almost-bruised flesh, and he chains them to the bed, then takes Chris into the other room. 

Leaves the door open so they can watch, rolled into each other, nursing the other’s bruises, as he lays the man face up on the floor, across thick cushions scavenged from the sofa. Knots and winds rope around him like lace on human scale, wrapping his thighs to his calves, binding his wrists to his erect cock with his fingers slipped into ropes on either side to keep them close without allowing self-relief. He tilts Chris’ head over the edge of a cushion and then kneels over him, pushing his cock straight down Chris’ throat, and sets up with a tablet on Chris’ chest so he can call Lydia and discuss developments.

“I think I helped him clean up something,” Derek says. He curls over Peter’s back, head laid into the curve of Peter’s neck, bound hands pressed against Peter’s spine. He’s just as flush as Stiles was, but for all his apparent fantasies about throwing Peter around and taking control of their relationship, he’s never once made Peter feel like rolling over and showing his belly. Never once done what Stiles does with a simple laugh. “Bunch of hired muscle, wasn’t even hard. He did let me borrow a gun from him. Think I need to tell Laura?”

Even so, the feel of him is far from unwelcome. He’s so much more physical with his affections than any other partner Peter has had—excluding Stiles, since ‘affection’ is too easy a word with him—and somehow Peter doesn’t resent him for it. Although he does often resent Derek for missing signs like that. He will accommodate Derek, he’s long since come to terms with that, but even for his nephew, he refuses to simplify himself.

“Are you two sharing him now?” Peter says. He’s already lost interest in what Derek did with the man, to be honest. Chris in the abstract is fascinating and a potential goldmine of information on Stiles and Lydia; Chris in person is unsettlingly flayed about his emotions, but only intermittently.

The rest of the time he’s docile to the point that Peter, if he was in charge, would start pricking him with pins just to see if he’s not substituted a mannequin in his place. He’s having one of those spells now, so slack under Stiles that Peter can see the ropes straining to hold him in place, only moving to slowly swallow every so often. Laura likes to say he’s meditating and Peter tends to agree with her. And he’s never been the meditative type.

“No,” Derek says. He pulls himself over and peers into Peter’s face, then drops back with an irritated huff. “You’re not getting upset over him now, are you?”

Peter looks back over his shoulder. Then, wincing as various parts of him twinge and burst with pain, eases over so they’re facing each other. Stiles ran them through a shower and got out the ointments before tying them up, but he left off the gauze and even the soft cotton of the sheets is terribly rough; almost-healed is worse than newly-raw, more often than one would think. When Peter has to slide his arms past his nipples, his wrist-cuffs forcing them over his chest, he has to strangle a whimper.

“Fine, you’re not,” Derek says, seeing his expression afterward. “Don’t get mad at me, it’s not like you don’t text Laura all the time about him.”

“About what he knows, not about him,” Peter corrects. He eases his hands down onto the bed, then sighs as his arms flex away from his chest. “And it’s not as if she’s been much help with that. Though I suppose I couldn’t expect much. She’s never been interested in the past.”

Derek glances through the doorway. “You made out with him that one time.”

“I was young and misguided, and he’s much more approachable when he’s drunk,” Peter says dryly. Then he looks at Derek. “I’m not about to go begging Stiles for the same share as Laura has, Derek. And I do hope you aren’t angling for that either, because that would be redundant as well as old hat.”

“If you’re misguided, you’d have to be looking for guidance in the first place,” Derek mutters. He shifts against the bed, testing their leg chains, and then slumps back when the links rattle. “I’m not Laura.”

In the other room, Stiles looks over, and then, when he sees nothing’s the matter, leans over so he’s crouching over Chris. He moves the tablet to between Chris’ feet and starts licking at Chris’ cock as he works. 

“I’d noticed,” Peter says.

“Yeah, well, so why me and not her?” Derek asks. Then, with a snort that doesn’t quite cover the hunch of his shoulders, he looks irritably at Peter. “I’m curious, don’t get upset. It’s just you’re the one who’s messed with all of us.”

“Are you fishing for compliments?” Peter asks back. He’s amused, and truthfully, not in a mocking way. Derek’s insecurities are frequently aggravating, and until recently, prone to result in new enemies, but they’re also strangely endearing. Sometimes Peter thinks that that’s because it reminds him at least one person in the world still wants his approval. “Because I never understood you.”

Derek would like to take offense. He scowls as if he is, but he holds his tongue. He’s also still a little—not childlike, he could never be taken as a child, with his build and his temper and the flash of interest when he sees blood, metaphorical or otherwise, but it’s a very young way of thinking, how literal he is. It reminds Peter of home, of back when Peter still had some idea of making people respect him. He didn’t want to be respectable, never has, but he did want the ease that comes with that, the ability to be free of others’ judgments.

He was very young then too, he thinks, and when he smiles at Derek, it’s genuine. “And because I wanted to,” he says. “I still want to. You drive me to madness at times, Derek, but after everything we’ve been through, I still want to know why _me_.”

Peter thinks that Derek will miss the nuance, as usual, that he’s just earned himself another drawn-out, silly argument, however much he tries. But his nephew surprises him. Derek has always been able to do that, starting with walking in on Peter and Laura and then _watching_ till they’d left, but it’s a better surprise these days. The sharp-edged grin instead of the helpless scowl, and then the twist over to press a long, lingering kiss to Peter’s mouth.

“So I sucked him off, after we killed those guys,” Derek says. He snakes a little closer, so he can keep lipping at Peter’s mouth as he talks. “Laura says sometimes he talks during sex, if you get him right. She’s right, he does. I think it’s whatever they did to him.”

“Like Stiles has done with you, with your little fantasies about throwing me over your shoulder and dragging me to your cave?” Peter says, kissing back.

Derek laughs, and then pulls himself right up to Peter. He grabs their hands and lifts them out of the way, then loops his arms around Peter’s neck to get even closer. When Peter hisses, feeling the scrape of Derek’s body against his nipples, Derek just hikes up his knees, as much as the chains will allow, and maneuvers himself to catch Peter’s cock under his own, clenching his buttocks so they graze at Peter’s cock head like a second teasing mouth. Sore and raw as Peter is, he thrusts forward into it, then buries his face in Derek’s hair, panting.

“Yeah, well, you know the last time he did that, the dirty talk, we were fucking in the woods,” Derek says. He dips under Peter’s head, starts lapping and sucking at Peter’s neck, managing to tease out the slight pressure marks from the tight shirt-collar. “And he didn’t go with the caveman shit. You know what he said? He said, think about Peter chasing you down, Derek. About the last time he was pissed off because you left him somewhere. And he goes after you, and he gets you, gets you because he’s sneakier than you, he can always trick you, and then he throws you in a closet and never lets you out. Just fucks you in there, where you can’t be that stupid again.”

Peter hisses into Derek’s head, then bites blindly down, just so he can have something in his mouth, something to keep him from moaning so loudly. His cock slides past Derek’s scrotum and he feels a barbell rolling along it, smooth and round but it might as well be edged in razor blades, with the kind of hot ache the piercing trails after it. He scrabbles at Derek’s back and Derek starts to pant too, pant and roll back into Peter’s nails, rasping them over his tattoo.

“And I came so fucking _hard_ , Peter,” Derek says. “You don’t even know, I thought he’d shot out my knees. And then he dragged me back, and you _were_ in the goddamn closet, and fuck, fuck, I never wanted to come out of there.”

He says that, gasping against Peter’s throat, and the next time his chest rubs up over Peter’s nipples, Peter hitches and comes. Still fucking along his perineum, dragging the come back and forth as it dribbles out, sheer momentum keeping Peter going. Peter only stops moving when Derek, coming himself, latches all four limbs around him like a vise and holds him down with brute weight.

They feel like they’re falling, even though they’re already flat on the bed. The world spins out around them and then Derek shifts and moves a nipple ring and it hurts, and the world still spins but it’s out on a line, and one that’s shortening with every tight spasm of pain that blisters across Peter’s chest. When it all comes crashing back, Peter snaps his head into Derek’s shoulder like he means to break it, and then just breathes.

“Why you,” he mutters after a while. “Derek, you idiot.”

“I don’t get you either,” Derek says. He nuzzles absently at Peter’s cheek and jaw, then moves to rest his face against Peter’s neck. “But you’re a lot nicer about it these days.”

Peter snorts, then hauls his head back across the bed. Sweat stings his eyes and he turns his head, rubs his face into the sheets, and then looks back at Derek. “Like that better, I take it?”

Derek shrugs. “I like it. Better, I don’t know. I don’t think I wanted it before, honestly.”

“You didn’t want me to be nicer?” Peter says, brows raised.

“I wanted you to be fucking there,” Derek says. He’s sluggish sliding to snarling, too tired to keep up the good mood. His come is sticking at their stomachs, and it’s only going to get worse, with how he’s wound around Peter, with what he’s doing to their leg chains, but of course he ignores that and just locks his limbs tighter when Peter tries to adjust them. “Never got past that. Never had time to.”

After a half-hearted effort, Peter gives up and just resigns himself to a very painful separation in the morning. “True.”

“So do you want to know what Chris said?” Derek says, a few minutes later. He sounds half-asleep.

The answer is yes. But Peter hesitates. He hurts, he’s tired. For some reason he still feels like the world is tilting around them, even though he’s no longer dizzy, and he should care. He should want to know desperately not only the cause, but also the trick to it, the way to master it. But really, he just wants to close his eyes, and relax into the other man.

“You can do that later,” he finally says.

Derek’s already asleep. Peter sighs, and doesn’t notice Stiles closing the door on them.

* * *

In the morning he does, when Stiles takes so long to answer their calls that Peter seriously considers allowing Derek to throw the bedside lamp at the door.

Once Stiles does, the bathroom is their next destination, but there’s little relief in that. After washing and using the toilet comes shaving, and while that might be welcome to Derek, Peter still hasn’t quite managed to acclimate. He thinks, when he’s able to, that it might have something to do with Stiles making him cooperate for it. He’d have an easier time if Stiles just tied him down and did it.

He’s still tied, of course, but he can move too much. He has to hold himself in place: his wrists are crossed over his chest, cuffed in place and then suspended from his nipple rings with chains so taut that just the act of breathing pulls at the rings. It helps that he’s allowed to lie on his back, but he can’t rest his elbows on the floor and so he’s still fighting gravity as Stiles tells him to spread his unbound legs, move his thigh this way and that, lift his ass for a towel to go under it.

Another towel’s under his neck, forcing his head to tilt back so the head of Derek’s cock can sit in his mouth. Derek’s got a knee squeezed to either side of Peter’s head, half-hanging from the chains keeping his arms behind him and pinned to the wall, because he keeps trying to shove his whole cock down Peter’s throat. The chains won’t let him, but he tries anyway, because he went first and now every time Peter breathes on his newly-shaved balls, he shudders and fucks down and fights his gag till Stiles reminds him to swallow, and stop getting spit down his chin.

“Almost done, Jesus, stop fidgeting,” Stiles says, spreading Peter’s buttocks with his knuckles. He’s so good with a razor that Peter doesn’t feel the blade so much as the air pulling in its wake, a slight tickling coolness that makes Peter tug the nipple rings every time. “Also, so Chris is leaving today. I heard from Evelyn and there’s this favor, this house that they want us to buy, so he’s going and checking it out.”

Peter whines, only half-hearing him. Stiles pulls the razor away, still keeping Peter spread on his knuckles, and then swings back with a heated, damp towel to wipe off the flecks of hair. It’s not near-scorching but it’s still too abrasive, feeling like sandpaper as Stiles industriously cleans him off.

“I know, you’re thinking, why buy a house?” Stiles says, very conversationally. “Well, Chris is local, they know that, and sometimes you gotta move certain pieces of real estate that nobody in their sane mind would buy. Shit like old covert detention centers, that sort of thing.”

He finishes up the toweling with a light flick of it against Peter’s tattooed thigh, then oils up his hands as Peter flinches and twists and flinches again, messily sucking at Derek’s cock. Then he reaches up and unhooks the chains from the nipple rings, just a bare second before his fingers rub firmly up Peter’s perineum, one of them sliding directly into Peter’s hole without so much as a pause. Peter jerks his wrists, cries out from a yank at his nipples that doesn’t actually happen, and then chokes around Derek’s cock.

That finger stays there as Stiles works around it, massaging in the oil, using his knee and then his foot to pin Peter’s thighs open. “And as for _why_ they gotta move it, well, I don’t like to dig too deep into government stuff, you know, life is fucked-up enough without opening that box, and anyway, most of the time their reasoning has so many layers that I honestly don’t think they can even follow it. But it’s not because they’re trying to frame us for something, so don’t worry about that.”

Stiles ends with a long, slow pull of his hand up Peter’s erection, and then a drag of his finger across Peter’s prostate as he removes it. Peter jerks roughly at that hard, intolerably narrow line of pressure, coming, his throat convulsing painfully sore muscles on thin air.

Then he collapses. Wonders why and how his mouth is free in the first place, and then watches as Stiles straddles him, bends down, almost floats a fingertip on Peter’s left nipple. Stiles hums thoughtfully, watching Peter wince in anticipation, and then shiver that out as the mere heat of that hovering fingertip sparks a low throb in his nipple.

“Getting there,” he says. He’s dragged Peter well clear of Derek, who’s just visible above him, writhing against his bonds. That’s why Peter’s mouth is empty, because Stiles wants it to be. “We set it back a little, but not too much.”

Peter tries to reply, can’t, and coughs. His throat still feels raw, deep down at the bottom of each swallow. “Surprising.”

Stiles smiles, then bends down and kisses Peter’s chest, just clear of the nipple. “I guess we gotta leave it alone again, get it all healed, even if you look so good like this. Anyway, so that house. Curious?”

“A little,” Peter admits. “Why else would they want to sell it to us?”

Then he sucks in his breath, pressing himself as Stiles walks on knees up till he’s gotten completely over Peter and is pressed up against Derek, one hand buried between Derek’s legs, the other pulling Derek’s legs up so Derek has to sit back on his ass.

“Gonna fuck Derek now,” Stiles says over his shoulder. “Get dressed, go ahead and start on breakfast. And ask Chris why.”

* * *

Chris doesn’t use whatever tailors that Stiles does for Peter and Derek, but his clothes are just as sleek. If he didn’t choose to unbutton his collar and roll up his sleeves, showing rope burns and a well-used leather collar under the shirt, and to limp around the kitchen so obviously, one would never know what he’d been up to the night before.

“You look a little worn yourself,” he replies, sliding a plate of food and a glass of milk in front of Peter.

“Thank you,” Peter says, and Chris’ brows tick up ever so slightly, before he goes back to setting out two more plates.

Peter’s hands are still cuffed, which limits his wardrobe choices, and the current sensitivity of his groin sets further restrictions. In the end, he went with loose silk pajama pants. He also grabbed a dress shirt in case Stiles decides to uncuff him, but for now he leaves that draped over the chair next to him.

“I wonder if this is how Laura feels,” he says as Chris sits down across the table from him. “Being assigned interviews with you, like one of those old-fashioned intrepid reporters from the comics. Talking with the mystery man of wealth and someone’s taste.”

Chris doesn’t have a plate in front of him. Peter isn’t sure if he’s already eaten, but suspects not, both from what Laura’s said and from the pristine condition of his mouth, lips swollen but clean. “This about the house?” he says.

“I wonder about his sense of humor sometimes,” Peter says, after a long moment.

“Only sometimes,” Chris says, and he makes it definitively not a question. He leans back in the chair, with hands on the table just back from the edge, loosely folded around each other. “It used to belong to my family. One of our bases. When Stiles and Lydia killed them all, the government took it over for classified uses. You’d think it would have worked out for them.”

“Then again, perhaps I understand his humor perfectly, and it’s just yours that confuses me,” Peter says, digging into the food. It’s just as good as Laura claims, good enough to motivate him to eat slowly, taking the time to work around the cuffs and not lose any of it on the floor. “Why not welcome the return?”

Chris, at least, doesn’t bother with the sham of asking what makes Peter think he welcomes it. “We’re not in that line of business anymore.”

“We?” Peter says, pausing.

And Chris gives him a very thin, very amused smile. Peter had thought he’d known the man—they weren’t friends, of course, but Peter had done his own research into Gerard Argent’s children, and had learned a fair amount about Chris and his family. Learned more when he’d finally met them, and had discovered the best way to get a rise out of Gerard was to provoke his son into showing some spine. But that man had been very different: worried, constantly defensive, always a little fearful of what might turn up.

Peter had admittedly not had much luck looking into the overseas relatives, but he’s not at all sure that this new version of Chris can be chalked up to them. And even Stiles and Lydia can’t create something out of nothing, so all along the raw materials must have been buried in the man. It’s a surprise, and Peter hasn’t made up his mind yet what kind.

“I don’t have the manpower, even if I was interested, and it doesn’t have the kind of profit margin that gets their attention,” Chris says. He pulls his hands almost off the table, only hanging on by the fingertips, and then absently scratches at one of the pinkish rope impressions snaking around his wrists. “You interested?”

“Is this a partnership proposal?” Peter says, straightening up.

Chris snorts. “Us?” And then, when Peter shrugs, he goes and he laughs. Very low, very dry. “I don’t have your number in my phone, Peter.”

“That could easily be fixed,” Peter says.

“You’re not trying. Not really,” Chris says after a moment, looking intently at Peter. He sounds faintly surprised. Then he shrugs it off, shifting from hip to hip with a grimace playing around his mouth. “Look, we have to take the house, but we shouldn’t keep it. It’s a problem. I don’t want to end up back in that business, but if I keep the house, it sends a certain signal. And you can end up where you don’t want to be when that happens. You know that.”

“This is all very fascinating, at least in its incredible vagueness,” Peter says. He eats a few spoonfuls before he continues, ignoring the way Chris’ stare sharpens. “It still sounds like your problem.”

Chris laughs at him again. “He asked you, didn’t he?”

Peter puts his spoon down. “Why?”

They measure each other for a few seconds. It’s also a surprise, Peter thinks, that the current version of Chris doesn’t hold more of an attraction for him. He can see what draws Laura, can see the glint of all the fractures. Can see the way Chris holds impossibly together in spite of them, the way he’s actually _stronger_ with them, in some respects. And he can even see how, when those breaks catch up with him, Chris still looks for someone.

But for Peter it’s not so interesting as the other people around. A break is still a break, and Peter has seen plenty of those. Has plenty of his own. And Peter already has someone who looks to him, someone to whom he looks to. Chris would be redundant.

“I mean why would I be of help to you?” Peter finally adds.

“I know what you meant,” Chris says. He says it as a statement, not an expression of irritation. “And that depends on what we end up doing with the place. I’m asking you because you because you’ve done things I haven’t, and you might know of a better use for it.”

Peter smiles. “Flattering, with your kind of family background.”

“It’s not like we were really that elevated, Peter. If you’re born with a silver knife, you’re still born with a knife.” Chris rubs at his wrists again. “Besides. Stiles said he wanted to ask you, see what you thought.”

“True,” Peter says, and lifts a spoonful of yogurt to his mouth.

“Are you interested?” Chris asks again, without a waver in his voice.

Before he answers, Peter eats some more food, and drinks some of the milk. Clears his throat, then drinks more milk to soothe the burn. It is very good cooking. He wonders when Chris learned it, whether that came before or after, and then he looks up at the other man. “I don’t think I have to be,” he says. “Stiles has other things for me to do. But yes, I’ll look at it. I’ll see if I can think of something. If—one thing first.”

Chris doesn’t sigh, just waits for it.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Peter says. “Something true. Something you know I’ll be interested in.”

A flicker of something hot goes through Chris’ eyes. Perhaps anger, perhaps even hatred, but it dies to amusement too quick. “My family isn’t—wasn’t ever really that blue-blooded. Bought our way to gentry at best, and we paid for that with bounties.”

“On the other side of the law, back then?” Peter says. “Predictable. You were always coming down on your poor neighbors, I take it.”

“We weren’t hunting people yet. Not good enough for that,” Chris says, giving Peter another one of his thin smiles. “Wolves.”

Peter lays down the spoon and looks at him.

“We got good enough, we earned a couple big bounties from the King of France himself. Used them to go into trade, and then we started smuggling,” Chris adds. He pulls his hands completely off the table, scratching up his arm, following a rope mark as it twists all the way to his elbow. “It was their high school’s mascot, sure, but they didn’t really think about that till they started digging into my family. Because around here they used to call the Argents wolves. No better than wolves, just like wolves, the way we drove out the competition. You didn’t know that.”

“No,” Peter says after a moment. 

He fingers his spoon, then drops his hand under the table. Hisses absently as his cock and balls shift in the pajama pants, silk slipping around the sensitized skin, and then fingers his tattoo through the pants. He can’t see it but he knows exactly where each tooth mark is. 

And then there’s Chris sitting across from him, in his collar. Peter looks up and laughs a little, seeing the brown leather band, and then he shrugs. He sees the parallel, of course, but he knows very well now how many differences can lie between them. Do lie between them. He’s not offended. Stiles and Lydia know what they’re doing, and he might not know what that is, but he knows enough to believe in that.

He knows, anyway, that whatever other people see when they see him and Derek and Stiles, it’s only what Stiles wants them to see. And the same goes for what he sees, when he looks at them. At himself.

“Well. Hard to argue with the evidence,” he says. “So what about the house?”

* * *

When Stiles and Derek finally come in, Chris slides off the chair and onto his knees by Stiles’ chair without pausing in his conversation with Peter. And he continues it from there, while Stiles talks to Derek about new guns and occasionally interjects a comment about the house, and feeds Chris by hand. Every so often Stiles will reach under Chris’ jaw and tug at the collar, and Chris will stop and shiver, and then pick up again in the same even, low voice.

“I can’t put my finger on what bothers me about it,” Peter says later to Derek.

They’re moving house again. Usually Stiles packs them up like anything else, like his guns or his knives, carefully wrapped up and set away, but the next location has no job waiting for them, merely a safehouse. They’ll have a little downtime and so he’s kept them loose, allowed to dress themselves and pick their own seats in their private train car and entertain themselves however they see fit.

Chris only had a little information on the house at hand—he said he would send more when he returned to the family estate—but he had given Peter the address, and the train has wireless. Peter flicks through photos of a chunky, unhandsome farmhouse on a tablet, then lowers it as Derek sits down beside him.

Derek can be at his worst during these periods, restless and unguided and bitter about both, but whatever he and Chris did, it must have worked out some of that excess energy. He napped a little earlier, while they were waiting for the train, head dropped onto Peter’s shoulder, and now he takes up the same pose, save with a tumbler of whiskey added. “Laura said something like that too,” he says. He shifts his head so he can see the tablet. “That’s the house?”

“The surrounding landscape’s better, but not by much,” Peter says, and swipes to the aerial views. He tilts his head as Derek’s hair starts to prick into his ear. “So what Chris told you—”

“He had that collar on when we were out,” Derek says. He drinks some whiskey, then lowers the glass and frowns at it. Then he lifts the glass to Peter’s mouth; after a moment, Peter sips some, but finds nothing the matter with the whiskey. “The whole time, under his shirt. He gets it out whenever one of them’s in town, whether or not they see him.”

Peter stills with his finger on the tablet. He doesn’t hate Chris these days, he thinks. He doesn’t think much of the Argents in general; they’ve all gone under the bridge, all of them, Kate’s wrenched neck and staring eyes the true last of them. Whatever Chris is now, however he uses his name, he’s not an Argent. That name serves the same purpose as Peter’s fine suits do.

“His choice, then?” he finally says.

“Yeah, I guess,” Derek says. “Laura says Lydia’s not into collars either, and when I asked, Chris laughed at me and said Stiles hates them.”

“Which we knew,” Peter says. He reaches over and takes Derek’s arm by the wrist, and has some more of the whiskey. “You know—”

“I asked him what he does on his anniversary. And he said, _which_.” For the first time since they left, Derek betrays a little anger, pushing his shoulders back into the seat, his voice edged and rough. But then, just as Peter is looking down, he snorts and he settles himself. He takes another drink, then leans over Peter to drop the tumbler off in a window-side cupholder. “That’s when I started getting tired of him. I don’t know either, but he’s just—you know, we’re fucked-up but he’s just a bunch of pieces.”

Then he glances up at Peter. He’s a little uncertain, even now. He has his opinions and he’ll stick to them despite everyone, but he always wants to know what Peter thinks of them. And today, Peter decides, he finds that flattering, and he smiles and he cranes around to kiss Derek.

It’s a little awkward, stirring up aches and pains, and then it _hurts_ , with Derek suddenly pushing up and forcing Peter back into the corner of the seat, his hands grabbing at Peter’s shoulder and thigh for balance. They pull Peter’s clothes too tight, straining them over his chest, and just that much is too much for the numbing cream Peter smeared over his nipples. And Derek’s hissing too, hissing and flinching as Peter grips his ass, digging up under the curves of it.

They make a mutual decision to pull themselves apart, panting and wincing. Derek stays half-crouched over Peter, biting his lip. Then he reaches down and he pulls up the armrests, and then lies down as Peter slowly straightens himself. He puts his head on Peter’s thigh and that’s still a little too much pressure a little too close to Peter’s groin, but Peter breathes in and out and rests his forehead against the cool window glass, and waits till he can stand it.

“I don’t know if it’s for the same reason, but I think I get why Stiles doesn’t want him around all the time,” Derek says after a second. His eyes close, then open. He fidgets with the edge of the seat, tracing something over and over on it. The center pad of his wolf footprint tattoo, Peter belatedly realizes. “But some of the time.”

“Are you developing sympathies for him?” Peter asks, amused.

Because he knows Derek will furrow his brow like that, then slide an irritated look back at Peter. And then huff out his breath, relaxing, as Peter sets his hand on Derek’s shoulder, fingers lapping back to reach towards Derek’s other tattoo.

“More like I’m getting to know him.” Derek’s lip twitches up in a brief sneer. “Again. But I guess we can’t help that.”

“No,” Peter says, petting him. “I suppose not.”

“I think I should mind more than I do,” Derek adds after another second. His eyes close again, and then stay closed as he cups one hand loosely over Peter’s knee. “Do you?”

Peter stops what he’s doing and considers. The best of luxury travel all around them, the finest clothes, and under that his cock and balls are denuded and vulnerable, still tender from the razor and twitching at every shift of his clothes. His nipples ache, and so do the sockets of his shoulders, and the outside of his elbows and the inside of his knees. He has no idea where Stiles is at the moment, and has no idea what Stiles wants him to do with this house, his little co-project with Chris.

He should mind all of that, he thinks. Any one of those things would have been enough to drive him insane, once. “No,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wolves attacking people actually was a recurring problem in France, well into Enlightenment times, and the King of France did indeed reward hunters who killed particularly famous and vicious wolves.


	4. Chapter 4

Derek observed once, in one of his erratic but undeniably sharp insights, that Stiles likes to work them as much outside the bedroom as inside it. So when they settle in their new hotel, in their new town, and the cuffs and the chains stay in the luggage and Stiles allows them to go in and out as they please, Peter doesn’t feel any less of the man’s attention on him. It’s different, the nature of the performance, but they’re still on stage for Stiles.

The first few days or so he doesn’t feel that difference. A packet of electronic files on the house is ready for him to download and he needs the better part of a day just to go through them. Or he would, if he sat down and simply worked on that, but Derek has little interest in this sort of research and Stiles is hardly going to keep the man distracted all the time. So Peter takes Derek out from time to time: the art museum a few blocks over, a Michelin-starred restaurant, a historical open-air market with enough butchering and blood running to keep Derek’s attention. A nightclub, where Derek presses past all the beautiful, preening women so Peter can fuck his mouth in the alley behind.

Stiles pops in and out. Gives them a kiss or a pinch or a hard bite and then goes. He joins them for longer at meals, and once he takes Derek to an Asian-style teahouse, then sends Derek back fidgety and irritating till Peter fucks him over the couch.

That’s about when Peter starts to feel anxious. He and Stiles speak enough that he doesn’t think Stiles is unhappy with his progress on the house matter, but he still has no clear idea what Stiles is expecting from him on it. Chris is no help, refusing to answer anything but straightforward factual questions, and when Peter texts Laura, it turns out she and Lydia are running something in London that’s keeping her too busy to talk to Chris and she hasn’t even heard of the house.

_He’s weird about anything that’s left from his family,_ she does offer. _A lot of things he’s got are left from them. Stiles and Lydia don’t buy him much, he just uses what he inherited. Not sure how they feel about that, but they let him._

_What kind of things are left?_ Peter texts back.

_Like his cufflinks, his belts. Some of his weapons._ Laura doesn’t write for several seconds, and then comes in during his reply. _Anything in that house besides his clothes and the toys. The car he drives used to be his cousin’s, he told me. He keeps stuff, and it’s not just because he can reuse them. I told you about his earrings._

Peter considers several responses before finally settling in: _Are we his confessors now?_

_I don’t think he’s Catholic,_ Laura replies, and he can hear the dryness of her sarcasm. _You irritated that Stiles is making you help him?_

_I wasn’t sure I believed that I was helping him,_ Peter types. He pauses, then hits ‘send’ without revision. _But I suppose we are. Ironic._

_I’m pretty sure he knows that,_ Laura sends, just as Peter hears a noise behind him.

He stiffens, then carefully turns around. By then he would have known if it was Derek, so it’s Stiles. Leaning in the doorway, something black leather with chains dangling from his hands, and when Peter relaxes heavily, he laughs and comes in. Lifts up Peter’s head by the jaw, then slips his thumb into Peter’s parting lips.

“Missed me, huh,” he says. “Can’t have that now. Come on. It’s been long enough, I want to get you checked over by the hotel doctor.”

Stiles does bring them to professional medical care from time to time, but usually it’s purely business. What he does after, of course, is not, but he means it when he says he doesn’t want scarring, he wants them to last. 

He does mean it this time, too. “We have time, so there’s no pressure here. You order more rest and we’ll do it,” he tells the doctor, who nods curtly and continues to look over Peter’s chest.

But he and the doctor are dressed—the doctor’s masked and gloved, with a brisk, sterile touch and nondescript clothing that is tailored enough to show that he has no personal interest in this—and Peter is not. Peter is kneeling on the coffee table of their room, naked, with his hands wrapped in tight leather mitts that keep them in fists. His wrists crossed in front of him, so he has to lift them himself when the doctor slides a wooden tongue depressor under them and pushes up.

He’s hard, has been since he was listening to the doctor’s soft footsteps coming down the hall, Stiles stooped behind him, one hand on the back of his neck and the other slowly working two fingers in and out of Peter’s ass, loosening him up for the examination. He had to bite his lip to keep his mouth shut, till the doctor asked Stiles to open it and checked his throat with that same tongue depressor. Now, at least, he’s got a gag strapped into it, hard rubber that he can sink his teeth into as disinterested fingers manipulate his nipple piercings, move his cock and balls from side to side.

Peter isn’t even embarrassed. Stiles had him too worked up for that, even before the doctor stepped in, and he’s too caught up with the press of the leather around his hands, the weight of Stiles’ hand on his nape, the slight, empty ache of his ass. The way it feels to be repositioned, Stiles forcing his head down and then reaching under to pull his arms forward, putting him on hands and knees as the doctor begins to slide a speculum into his hole. He’s been guessing at boundaries for days and then here they are, neatly, cleanly drawn around him. He might not wear any bindings besides on his hands, but he feels as if he has an invisible net pulled over him, knots branding his skin all over, dictating every movement.

Stiles and the doctor discuss his body over his head, easily throwing cold medical terms between each other. The speculum is removed and as Peter groans, Stiles squeezes his nape and then moves around, pushing a plug into Peter. Still talking to the doctor, thanking him for the visit. The pair of them chat about the weather for a few minutes, and the doctor recommends that Stiles visit a nearby park for its statuary.

Then the man leaves. Stiles moves away, shuts the door. Comes back and pulls Peter’s head up by the hair as he unstraps the gag. “Well, you’re all better now, aren’t you,” he says, smiling. His fingers drag through Peter’s hair, then come around to hook into the soft flesh just back from Peter’s chin. “Off the table.”

He puts Peter on the floor and sits on the sofa, and feeds Peter’s mouth his cock. Peter’s throat got a green light but it’s already roughening up again, a low burn starting down where the head of Stiles’ cock keeps bumping. Often Stiles wants to draw it out, just make Peter suck slow so the resulting jaw ache will last for hours, but not this time. He uses Peter’s mouth just long enough to get himself off, and then he kicks off his jeans and pulls Peter up on the couch so they’re both lying on their sides, Peter’s back to Stiles’ front.

Peter assumes that he’ll end with Stiles’ cock hardening again in his ass, but that’s not what happens. What happens is, Stiles pulls out another set of cuffs and he straps them around Peter’s thighs. At first there’s enough room for Stiles to put his hand between them, fingers layered thickly with lube that he rubs all along Peter’s perineum and the inside tops of Peter’s thighs. But after that Stiles slides his cock between Peter’s legs. Pushes it up tight against the curve of Peter’s ass, tucking it so Peter’s thigh muscles squeeze it up into Peter’s body when they flex, and then tightening the thigh cuffs so that those muscles do flex.

He laughs as Peter gasps, then wraps his arms around Peter, holding him back as he tries to twist. His cock’s driving straight across Peter’s prostate, and the more Peter moves, the more the pressure builds between that and the plug still in Peter’s ass, which nudges forward whenever Stiles pulls at him. It’s intolerable but Stiles forces him to arch into it, to throw himself back between two crushing forces till the first of what Peter knows will be a very long series of racking sobs is impelled out of his mouth.

“Oh, come on, Peter,” Stiles says, kissing his nape, talking over the whimpers. “You were getting bored, weren’t you?”

Peter shakes his head, then cries out again as Stiles drops his hand, worming it under the bound fists Peter is grinding mindlessly into the cushions, and wraps it around his cock. Just holds it, just grips it so he can’t find relief that way.

“No?” Stiles says. And, when Peter doesn’t answer, flicks the end of Peter’s cock with his nail.

“No,” Peter gasps. He shakes his head again, then presses it into the sofa and sobs as Stiles starts playing with his nipples. “No, not—worried, I was—I didn’t, don’t—don’t know—”

Stiles laughs. “Peter, that’s bored with you. You know that. But you’re smart, you know I can’t fuck with you all the time either. And it’s not even that we gotta wait for you to heal up.”

He twists a nipple, pinching it behind the piercing, and then flattens it with his finger as Peter struggles against him. Peter can’t go forward or back, not without pressing himself into something that sends fresh, hurtful shivers through him, but he can’t hold still either, not with how Stiles is teasing him. So he ends up hitching in place, his hips jerking minutely, constantly, as the plug rocks in him, Stiles’ cock drags over his prostate, the fingers on his cock tighten.

“You’d get used to it,” Stiles adds. “Like the cages, you know, I could make you wear one all the time. You’d never get hard, you’d never get it off. You’d just have to lie there and take it when I fucked you, when Derek fucked you, because I could put the kind of cage on you, you’d never fuck somebody again. Never have Derek’s pretty ass wrapped around it, and such a shame, Peter, ‘cause he’s finally being good about you and he looks so, so good that way, doesn’t he?”

Peter shakes and sobs. He twists his head against the cushions, eyes closed, all the things that Stiles is telling him flashing through his mind. Not images, sensations—he can _feel_ that hard cage around his cock, can feel the drag of its weight. Can taste his frustration in his mouth, can hear himself crying there and here and for a second he thinks perhaps the world has split asunder. Has taken him in both places, because it seems impossible that so much sheer sensation can exist in a single place, a single body.

“But I don’t.” Stiles makes soothing noises at him. Little sweet noises that drag Peter back to this reality, inch by inch, and they’re paired with soft, long kisses across his neck and his shoulders, with a gently pulling hand moving over his cock. “I don’t, Peter, because you’d get used to it. You’d still hurt, sure, but it wouldn’t be as good. It’d just all be the same, all the time. You’d get bored, Peter, I know you would. It’s better when it’s fresh, it’s better when you forget how bad it was and then you get it again and it _hurts_.”

And he forces his thumbnail against the head of Peter’s cock. White-hot pain bursts under it, behind Peter’s eyelids, all through Peter’s gut, and Peter comes with a brutality that leaves him spasming for seconds afterward.

Stiles is fucking between his thighs through it, rubbing that cock into Peter’s already clenching body so that it feels like a stabbing knife. Peter can’t even flinch, can’t whine, just feels little remnants of sobs dribble out of his slack mouth as the other man uses him. Every roll of Stiles’ cock across his prostate sends another wall of spasms through him; his teeth snap down and he tastes blood on his lip, across his tongue. When he finally feels the man’s come spreading over his thighs, he’s so relieved that it’s wrenching, it’s intense and he almost thinks he’s come a second time.

They curl against each other on the couch. Stiles doesn’t need that long to catch his breath but he doesn’t crawl off right away, as he usually does. His hands move slowly over Peter, drawing out the last few tremors so Peter moans quietly in agony, and then settle so one’s cupping Peter’s balls, the other’s curled across the front of Peter’s throat. He wipes the blood off Peter’s mouth with his thumb, then slides that in, lets Peter nurse weakly at it.

“Good, isn’t it?” he says, lipping at Peter’s nape.

Peter moans again, around his thumb. Then pants heavily when Stiles pulls that away. He licks at his lip, hissing as the torn part stings, and then clears his throat. It might not be raw now, but he still sounds like it is. “I’m not bored,” he says. He even laughs, a shaky, shadow of a sound that he nevertheless means. “How could I be?”

“You could,” Stiles say, equable but accepting no argument. “Trust me, I know. But you’re _very_ good like that, Peter. So good, you know, not just holding onto what you’re used to. It’s fun to play with it, have a little nostalgia trip, but you need to drop it sooner or later.”

“You don’t let me,” Peter says, breathing in slowly. 

He closes his eyes again, feels the way his throat stretches against Stiles’ fingers, his balls shift against Stiles’ palm. He might not hold but he’s held, all right, and some things are irrelevant to his interest level. He could no more have an opinion about them than he could about the flow of blood through his heart. They simply are part of him now.

“Is that what’s the matter with Chris?” he asks. “That he does hold on?”

Stiles tightens his fingers over Peter’s throat and his lungs gasp, his muscles tighten, he feels a hot rush of adrenaline through already-burnt nerves, but he doesn’t really feel nervous about asking. He already knows whatever happens, Stiles will make him like it.

The hand around his neck loosens after just a few seconds, just long enough to leave lingering sparks of pain in his windpipe. “That he keeps shit till somebody takes it out for him,” Stiles says. He’s not correcting; his tone is too thoughtful. “I guess you could look at it as a problem. Lydia’s kind of talking me around otherwise, lately. She’s got a point, we can’t have you all going off at once.”

“You’re not going to let us,” Peter says. He opens his eyes, feeling Stiles shift behind him, and then groans as Stiles tugs his cock out from behind Peter’s thighs. The come’s sticking at them, pulling at Peter’s skin and even shaved, even without the hair to catch on, it burns a little. “Not let us bore you. Will you?”

“Nah, I guess not.” Stiles sits up and reaches around, and releases the thigh cuffs. He pushes at Peter’s ass, moving it out of the way so that he can climb over and get off the couch, and then he squats down to look Peter in the eye. Pushes Peter’s hair out of the way with one hand, smiling, like he’s a lover. “You do keep asking me not to. Betting I won’t. Don’t you, Peter?”

His hand slides under Peter’s head and Peter’s rocking the weight back, letting himself loll as Stiles bends to claim his mouth. Peter whines for it, even as Stiles is ravaging him.

“You’re so good that way,” Stiles says, letting him back down. “Look so good, Peter, begging me to keep you moving. Keeps _me_ wondering, and I don’t have to deal with all the bullshit that Chris brings in.”

“But you still keep him. Think he could be better, even,” Peter observes. The hand under his head digs at him a little with the nails and he stiffens, and then Stiles kisses him again, tender and slow, massaging his scalp. He moans and then goes limp as Stiles finally lets him go. “The house, Stiles?”

“You can do whatever you want with it,” Stiles says. “Honestly, Peter, I really don’t care anymore.”

* * *

Stiles unties Peter and washes him off, then drops him in the bedroom and disappears. Peter’s too exhausted to register anything except that Stiles is no longer demanding his attention, and promptly falls asleep.

Derek was out, doing something, but he’s curled up next to Peter when Peter wakes. He doesn’t stir as Peter gingerly gets out of bed, and in fact, sleeps for another hour or so before he finally rolls over and opens his eyes.

“Hey,” he says, and then focuses on the tablet in Peter’s hand. “Again? Aren’t you tired of staring at that place?”

“Yes, actually,” Peter says. He lowers the tablet, then turns it off and looks at Derek. “How was…your…”

Derek looks amused, even as he’s scowling his way through grinding the crusts from his eyes, and scruffing up his hair, and crawling off the bed. He heads into the bathroom, and after a second, Peter gets up and follows.

“I was checking out a dealer. The guns were nice,” Derek says dryly. He uses the toilet, then washes his hands. Then tenses, his eyes shooting up to watch Peter in the mirror as Peter comes up behind him. He’s never been much about hiding how much he doesn’t like surprises, but just his body, not his voice, bridles. “They had a flamethrower. That was kind of cool.”

“A flamethrower? Over our trauma, are we?” Peter says.

Once he gets his hands on Derek’s hips, Derek relaxes, upper lip twitching towards a sneer. They’re both naked and it’s cool in the bathroom and the first graze of their bodies together sends a shiver through both of them. Derek’s head drops. He works back his hands till they’re on the edge of the sink, then humps up his shoulders and arches his back, sealing himself against Peter.

“I guess. It looks different from the other side. When you’re the one doing it,” he says. His eyes rise in the mirror, strangely contemplative. But lazy—he looks at Peter, and then down at the counter, at the tubes of lubricant neatly lined up by their toothbrushes.

That’s a terrible accident waiting to happen, Peter thinks, and then finds himself smiling into the back of Derek’s shoulder. He just lies against his nephew for a few seconds, feeling their skin warm and then heat, enough for a little sweat to tickle down his thighs. Then he reaches out, flicks the brushes aside, and picks up one tube.

He starts kissing Derek’s back as he thumbs off the top, slicks up his fingers. Derek breathes in sharply, lifting his shoulders into it, particularly as Peter gets to the spiraling black lines stretched between them. Shifts his feet apart, and then somehow flexes his buttocks so that they part slightly, letting Peter’s cock wedge in between them.

Peter keeps kissing Derek’s shoulders and neck, letting his hands drop down to pull Derek’s cock to hang over the sink rim, to push between the other man’s thighs and then work up to his ass. Into his ass, stretching him slowly as he grunts and groans and then rolls back into Peter’s fingers. He’s a little puzzled at first, looking hard at Peter’s reflection and then at Peter himself, twisting his head around so far that Peter has to leave off kissing his neck and kiss his jaw instead.

But then Derek shrugs, lets his head swing forward again. Then puts it down, hunching over so that it hangs between his arms. When Peter hooks his chin over Derek’s shoulder, the first inch of his cock in the other man, Derek tilts his head over and nuzzles at Peter’s cheek. Then drops his head and lets out a long, taut moan, taking in the rest of Peter. It’s not the torn, vicious sound that Peter is used to from him, but it’s no less able to get under Peter’s skin, make his breath catch even as he steadies himself against Derek.

He loves his nephew. He loved the rest of his family too, in his way, and he still loves Laura. But he loves Derek like something he can’t understand, like he can’t help but love him, and that used to infuriate him. His stubborn, mule-tempered nephew, so quick to anger and to judge, so slow to catch on. His one and only, his nephew, who will follow him past hell and away from heaven, but who will ask him, always, why didn’t Peter just tell him what they were doing in the first place. Who comes after him when nobody else will. Derek’s developed his own rapport with Stiles but Peter remembers Derek only agreed to not get himself killed, to have the time for that, in the first place because Peter asked.

Peter doesn’t fuck him like he’s infuriating. Peter fucks him slow and gentle, with tender kisses and hands that stroke without bruising, without scratching, and in the glass Derek is beautiful, with half-closed eyes, lashes curving soft and dark against his cheek, and the hard cut of his muscles, straining even with the unhurried pace. Derek bends under him and lets him fuck like that till they both shudder and then slump together over the sink.

“That was different,” Derek mutters, knocking his hand against the tap. The water goes on and Derek knocks it back off, and then inhales a little as Peter lips at some sweat on his neck. “You’re _really_ nice today. What’d he do?”

“Presented me with a clean bill of health.” Peter works his arms around till he can put his hands on the counter. He’s not as restored as he thought, coming out of the nap, and his knees are a little shaky, but he locks them and makes himself stay where he is. He’s not quite ready to shake himself out of this mood. “So I thought we’d try something else. See what it’d be if we were nice.”

Derek looks up and his eyes meet Peter’s in the mirror. He’s grinning, razor-edged and certain, a light in his gaze that Peter recognizes. Family, Peter thinks, just as amused. They’re too alike sometimes, not that Peter’s going to do anything about it.

“If we weren’t pierced and tattooed and fucked?” Derek says, brows rising.

“And chipped,” Peter says. He braces himself on one hand and then moves the other between them, to the small of Derek’s back, rubbing his thumb over the slightly higher scar within the tattoo. “Don’t forget that.”

Derek snorts. “Yeah. Yeah, so…it’s not bad. But you really think we would’ve fucked like this if we were still on our own? Think we’d even get to thinking about it?”

“Point,” Peter says, pulling his hand from Derek’s back. He slides it around Derek’s hip and then up under Derek’s balls. Catches Derek’s eyes in the glass again, holding them as he searches out a barbell and folds his thumb and forefinger around either end of it. “I agree, it’s nice once or twice. But—”

He twists it, and Derek’s eyes flare hotly as he hisses. Derek hitches himself up, then grips at Peter’s cock with his ass like he’s trying to pinch it off Peter. He snorts again, over the sound of his nails dragging on the counter, and drops his head. Braces his hands, levels a challenge at Peter in the mirror with his eyes.

“So fuck me again,” he says, voice rising, heat and knives in it. “Like you fucking mean it this time.”

Peter’s annoyed, and is thinking _as usual_ he’s missing the point, and then Derek reaches back and grabs at Peter’s ass, hauling them closer. And Derek’s head tips enough for Peter to see the man’s mouth and Derek is still grinning. His nephew, his dear little infatuated boy who’s finally grown up and who _gets_ Peter, not in all ways but in the ways that goad just where Peter wants, needs him to. No, no, they’re not missing anything these days.

“Since you asked so nicely,” Peter says, laughing, and then he bends over and he bites into Derek’s back.

* * *

Peter sends Chris an email: _Burn it down._

Chris doesn’t reply, though a few hours later, Laura texts Peter a devil emoticon. _We’re back from London. I don’t know what you told him, but Lydia said she hasn’t made two visits this close together since he was in the hospital after shooting himself._

_is the sex good?_ Peter replies.

Laura doesn’t answer right away, although he’s not expecting her to, and anyway, he’s more than busy with other matters. Stiles has a new job they need to vet, one that will be as much about buying and selling intelligence as it will be killing, so both Peter and Derek have research to do, roles to prepare for. Peter would like to ask, but doesn’t, whether they’ve been taking on bigger operations than before. Whether Stiles is shopping them as a team instead of an occasionally collaborating pair. He suspects yes.

He also would like to ask whether Stiles and Lydia saw each other more or less before, and there he doesn’t have any feeling as to the right answer. At any rate, they’ll all be meeting up on a different continent in a couple weeks, and Stiles has been folding Peter into traveling logistics as well, so he may have his answer via firsthand experience. If he can get Chris to cooperate.

An anonymous text pops up while he’s taking a coffee break: _Your family’s lawsuit used up so much of Gerard’s money that he couldn’t hire his usual guns when he moved to their town. So his men were a little sloppy, got the attention of the local law._

_You’re welcome, Chris,_ Peter texts. He drinks some coffee. _Next time you can just send me photos._

_Don’t text me again. This is a burner,_ Chris sends.

Peter finishes his coffee and goes back to work. He and Stiles settle the traveling arrangements, and then they turn their attention to client vetting. Derek is surprisingly interested in such things, despite the lack of exciting violence and the large quantity of dull financial records involved, and so Peter has less to do there.

And Laura finally gets back to him. _This isn’t about before, is it?_

_took it that badly, did he?_ Peter texts her.

_I don’t know how he’s taking it._ Normally Laura either responds immediately, or she doesn’t get back to him for hours, if not days. She’s more ruthless than Derek that way, always has been. Always been the one of them to make that clean cut and make it stick.

But here the ellipsis symbol that shows she’s actively writing blinks for seconds and seconds. Peter moves his phone to one hand, intending to return to his work, and then finds himself stalling, waiting for her. He and Laura—he doesn’t have any desire to sleep with her now, and may not ever again, to be honest. They were different people before, and now they’re both satisfied to leave those selves behind. It’s strange, he thinks, but he loves her so much more these days, when he knows her so much less well.

He could guess at the reason for the delay, but his odds of being right have declined greatly. And his interest has risen accordingly.

_I think he’s still thinking it over,_ she finally sends. _I think he hasn’t thought like this for a while. So good job, I guess._

_It wasn’t about him,_ Peter texts her. He pauses, half-listening to Stiles and Derek discuss delivery history in the next room. _Or what happened to us. I think if it was, I wouldn’t even be talking to him._

Laura’s a lot quicker this time. _I never said good job to you._

_so he’s ignoring you,_ Peter sends, chuckling under his breath. And he _likes_ her so much better, he thinks. Before he liked her rancor, liked her willingness to recognize the misfit between themselves and their lives. Liked how joyous she was in her discontent, as if that’s anything to how scintillating she is now. 

These days he just simply likes her.

_Yeah, but it’s not just about the sex, uncle,_ she replies, with a long string of annoyed emoticons. _I think he might be more fun when he’s done. That’s going to be a while, and I do put that on you. But I can always just go tease Derek._

_Is fun what you want from him?_ Peter types. Then he deletes it and revises. _Is fun acceptable?_

Laura sends him a shrugging emoticon. And then: _why_

_Because you should have fun,_ he sends her, after some thought. _I want you to have fun. I like you better that way._

_You’re sweet, Peter. Don’t make me text Derek about why,_ she texts. Then she’s silent again, and after a few minutes, he decides that she’s dropped the conversation and goes back to work.

The next morning, he wakes up to a new text from her: _Put it this way, I’m still interested._

_good,_ he texts. One-handed, his other arm buried under Derek, his nephew sleeping peacefully with his ass wrapped around Peter’s cock.

_Also, we dented that damn car of his, it was so good, and then we climbed inside and broke a window,_ she immediately adds.

Laughing, Peter lets the phone drop from his hand. It’s still buzzing with incoming texts, which spurs a grouchy, grumbling noise from Derek, but his nephew quiets when Peter settles flush against Derek’s back, working his arms down till they’re circling Derek’s waist. Peter’s cuffs just allow him to grasp Derek’s cock and cup Derek’s balls, fitting his fingers carefully between the metal rings that cage both, and as he tightens his hands, Derek slowly arches himself, ass rolling down into the cradle of Peter’s hips.

They moan over the phone’s buzzing. Derek pulls at where his hands are bound over his head, chained to the headboard, and in the bathroom Peter hears the shower go off, hears Stiles stepping out, whistling cheerfully. Peter shudders, anticipating the other man’s entrance, and that shudder propagates into Derek till they’re both rocking desperately together, waiting for Stiles to come and do something with them.

* * *

“Wait,” Peter says, twisting up the chair, his chains jangling, his breath as rough as the hand twisting his nipple. “Wait. Just—Stiles, please—”

Stiles stops. Completely stops, even pulling his hands away and folding them behind his back as he bends over Peter. He looks bright and inquisitive, almost a schoolboy with his boyish face, his ruffled hair and slightly rucked clothes. “Yeah? You want something, Peter?”

Peter just manages a nod before his strength gives out and he slumps back, groaning, his hips still twisting weakly. He’s pinned to this office chair with his hands bound over his head, to the steel neck of the chair’s headrest. It’s one of those expensive executive chairs, all padded leather and sinuous curves, and Stiles reclined its back as far down as it’d go so he could pull Peter’s ass forward, hang Peter’s legs over each of the chair’s arms and then strap them there—leather cuffs, tight metal chains—so Peter’s balanced precariously, excruciatingly, on the thick plug in his ass.

His entire pelvic area already feels like a collection of shooting pains bound together with an incessant, throbbing ache. Even as he collapses, he’s wincing, feeling the plug shift and wedge in him, driving his hips open. “Please,” he says, staring up into that smiling, hazy face. “Please don’t—don’t let me see.”

Stiles is surprised. He’s surprised him. For a second Stiles is absolutely still, the stillest thing in the universe, while everything else wavers and shakes around him.

And then he grins warmly. He puts his hand back down, cupping it under Peter’s head, stroking his thumb along Peter’s working jaw. “Still betting, aren’t you?” he says. “Yeah, well, lucky for you, I like that. So okay, Peter, you’re not going to see.”

He bends over and kisses Peter very sweetly. So sweetly, compared to the chains keeping Peter’s body in a constant state of taut pain, to the plug impaling him, to the swelling heat of his tortured nipples, that Peter moans and closes his eyes. And then moans again, starting, as something wraps around his head and keeps his eyes shut.

“But you’re still not waiting to find out all the details, I see,” Stiles says. Dryly, dry and casual, while his hands drag down Peter’s body, purposeful and ruthless. He flicks at already-swollen nipples, then scratches at quivering belly muscles, leaving hot pricks for the stinging sweat to make sing. “You’re not going to see, well, that goes for the whole thing. Roll the dice, Peter, take what you get, that’s how it works.”

Peter’s gagged. He’s almost grateful for it, for having that pointless avenue taken away from him before he can waste what little energy he has on begging. Grateful for having something to stop up his moans and whimpers and sobs as Stiles picks up his cock, strokes its tight, rigid length till he’s pressed it back up against Peter’s body. A thumb smears chilly, oily lube around its head, pushing the stuff at the slit in the center till Peter feels like Stiles means to make another mouth down there. Make it swollen and tender, just like Peter’s lips around the stiff rubber gag.

Stiles teases him with the sound before putting it in. He made Peter look at them first, before they started, made Peter pick them up and feel the weight of each in their sterile paper wrapping. Even pointed out the size that Peter had rejected way back on the first night Stiles had had him. And now he circles the head of Peter’s cock with the end of one of them, dragging it through precome and lube, tipping it towards the slit and then pulling back till Peter is completely exhausted with expectant sobs. Only then, when Peter’s too limp to even react, does he slide the rod in.

Peter has no idea how to feel about it. He’s never felt anything like it, and right now, all he knows is that he can’t feel anything _but_ it. The sound’s passage into his cock seems to have marked out nerves all over his body, in spasms in his shoulders and upper back, in an extra throb through his nipples, reminding him of the metal bisecting those, in a strange, exquisitely painful ripple of his ass around the plug.

And then the rod is in, and Stiles is speaking to him. Telling him they’ll be back soon, to just lie back and enjoy it, to stop crying, he’ll get used to it. Stiles is tender now, carefully lifting each nipple ring as he threads a fine chain through it, then lowering it so that the chain’s tension gradually settles the ring flat against Peter’s chest. Smoothing the chains in a vee down to the top of Peter’s cock, connected to the sound so that every time Peter moves, even breathes, the sound shifts and his nipples ache. He can feel the sound rise and fall in his cock, too weighty for the chains to pull entirely out, and it seems to drag his entire body with it, centering the vicious shudders that are going through him now.

Something is pressed into his ear, and then Stiles’ voice goes slightly flat from the earpiece. He talks to Peter through that as he and Derek—gagged, cuffed, kneeling on the floor and watching the whole time—exit the room. He’s very descriptive today. Perhaps because they aren’t going far. Aren’t even driving away. They’re just going to the roof, going up and watching from the best view this rural little ski-resort town has to offer, and Stiles was going to set up the video feed on a laptop so Peter could see too, but he didn’t want to do that so he’ll just have to put up with what Stiles tells him.

It’s just a farmhouse. Down below, on the outskirts of the town, down there where the actual people live and not up here with the tourists who only come for a little meaningless fun. Families that were probably around when the first Argent bought the place, that probably have blood kin buried in the cellar and in the surrounding fields. They know what’s happened there, every time they drive by it, and now—

Peter thinks he senses it, even before Stiles’ sharp, high laugh comes across the connection. They’re too high up to feel the charges but he tightens up. Can feel himself contract, soft flesh pulling against thick leather, unforgiving chains. Contracting around all the things Stiles has put in him: plugged ass, pierced nipples, and now the sound in his cock. He can feel his _cock_ squeeze around the metal rod, can feel the rod shifting till it won’t move any further when he needs it to, desperately needs it to get out of the way, he can feel the pressure building up and he can’t—he can’t—

Stiles laughs and down below the farmhouse is afire, what parts of it just haven’t collapsed, and in the room Peter is screaming.

They haven’t gone far, haven’t left him for long. It’s still too long, and when they return, when Stiles takes out the sound and pushes his cock into Derek’s mouth, holds up his lolling head with warm palms, Peter is still shattered with gratefulness. 

He understands why much better. He even understands why he wants it on certain levels, wants it and yet would never be able to do it himself, and so that’s why Stiles bothers. There’s a baseline of things about Peter that don’t change, that will carry through no matter how and where and with whom he finds himself, and the difference now is merely that he knows much more precisely what those things are.

But he still doesn’t know so many things. He doesn’t know what his cock feels like, freshly-fucked from the sound and then trying to spit come into Derek’s frantic, hot mouth, until it happens. He doesn’t know what he feels like, rolled into bed afterward with his head on Stiles’ lap, Derek curled around him, listening to Stiles carry on a casual conversation with the son of the killer of his family, until it happens. He doesn’t know what he wants, waking up the morning after he’s had an Argent house burned to the ground, simply because he _said so_ , until he does, and then he finds that he wants to kiss his nephew, to get fucked by Stiles, to pick up his phone and see that Laura’s texted him a photo of her teeth marks fading on Chris’ thigh and one word: _good_.

He doesn’t know till then how he’ll feel about it, and then he finds that he’s smiling, touching the screen gently, as if someone’s just shown him baby pictures, and as if he really cares about that sort of thing.

He doesn’t know so many things, and he still wants to know about them. Peter hasn’t changed that much. He’s just—different.

They like him that way.


	5. Chapter 5

The man from the meeting, the portfolio manager, he looks curiously at Peter the next time they see each other. “Interesting ideas you’ve got about asset divestment.”

They’re in a very nice bar in Marseille. Very high-end, very dark, very quiet, with plenty of private rooms where nothing ever happens, and the cleaning staff are beautifully silent. Peter considers one such room before deciding against it, and simply picking up his drink. He ignores the way the man leans too close, wanting a reaction out of Peter that he doesn’t merit.

“I could say likewise,” Peter says.

The man smiles humorlessly, and then walks away. He heads into a different private room. The door closes, then opens a few minutes later and Derek steps out. His hands are empty but he’s scratching at his palm as he comes up to stand with Peter at the bar. Behind him, an expressionless attendant in a nondescript suit ushers a team of hazmat-suited people into the room.

“Need to change up the grip on that one,” Derek says, seeing Peter glancing at his hand. “Balanced weird, kick might’ve given me a blister. I don’t think I like the feel of it either. Too smooth.”

Peter shrugs and then pivots so that he’s leaning one arm on the bar. He pulls out his phone, checks it, and by the time he’s put his hand back to slip it into his pocket, Derek has pushed up so they’re hip to hip, and Peter’s hand can either force its way between them, or it can pass over the other man.

He chooses to slide it across Derek’s back, dipping under Derek’s coat as he grips Derek’s hip. Then he pushes his hand further around, searching out the inseam of Derek’s jeans and the slight bobble of a piercing, then the second one. Derek’s already nosing behind Peter’s ear, mouth hot and wet and soft, working along Peter’s hairline, his hand squeezing between Peter and the bar and moving impatiently up till Peter has to trap it and pin it to the counter, a beat before it would have reached a nipple ring.

The staff is discreet, and none of the few other patrons in the main area care, but Peter would still prefer to not be needlessly blatant. So he ignores Derek’s irritated huff, and simply tilts his head so Derek can have better access to his neck. “You’re always so…urgent after,” he murmurs, finishing his drink. “There’s something to be said for anticipation.”

“There’s something about wanting to get out of here, and get over and get to the others already,” Derek says. He’s annoyed, but not too much; he presses his annoyance against Peter’s skin with a light rasp of teeth, the firm flat of his tongue just behind Peter’s jaw.

“It’s just a layover, nephew,” Peter says. “We’ve never been here before, and now we’ve been here less than a day. Are you bored already?”

Derek starts to reply, then stops himself. He pulls his pinned hand free and then puts it back on Peter’s belly, but just rests it there, thumb hooked into Peter’s waistband. He cants his groin forward, encouraging the two fingers Peter has massaging around the barbells in his scrotum, and then snorts against Peter’s ear. “Maybe, I don’t know. I guess I’m just used to moving now. Feels weird when we’re not.”

“Well,” Peter starts, and then he senses eyes.

So does Derek, and they turn together as Stiles and the woman from the meeting, Evelyn, come out from the kitchen behind the bar. Evelyn flips up the hinged part of the counter, then gives Stiles a kiss on the cheek as he follows her out into the main area.

She doesn’t look over, and simply walks over to the room where the manager had gone. After a glance inside, without even missing a step, she nods once and then continues on her way out of the place. Stiles comes over to Peter and Derek, but he’s keeping watch till she disappears. Then he sighs. He dusts off his hip and then steps up behind Derek, gripping Derek’s ass with one hand and using it to push Derek further into Peter so Derek buries a groan in Peter’s hair.

“These favors get so complicated sometimes,” Stiles says, shaking his head. “Really, you gotta wonder why they don’t just do a better job with their HR department, and catch it before it gets too far. Got to be expensive too, getting a replacement.”

“I suppose it’s not so easy a skill to come by, reading people,” Peter says. He stifles his own groan as Derek’s breath puffs down his shirt, just enough of it filtering down to make his nipple—already sore, of course—begin to tighten. “It’s a moving target, after all. People change all the time.”

Stiles looks at him, then smiles. Hooks an arm around Derek’s neck, pulling him off Peter, and then he reaches out and grips Peter by the inside thigh, just over the tattoo and the chip. “You settle the tab?”

Peter nods. His breath is already shortening.

“All right, then we should get going.” Stiles squeezes Peter’s thigh once, then releases it.

They follow him out. Stiles’ hand starts on the small of Peter’s back, then moves to Peter’s nape, dipping his head for him as they get into the car. Derek sits in shotgun, his hands cuffed behind him, securely seatbelted in place. The windows are so darkly tinted that they can’t be seen into from the outside, so he’s blindfolded and gagged, too.

Peter squeezes into the small space between the gearshift and the dashboard. His cuffed hands grind into a storage compartment and he’s tipping himself forward even before Stiles drops his folded-up suitcoat onto the gearshift, then pats it encouragingly. He shifts up, grunting as his knees and his ass and his stomach hit various parts of the car, and then carefully lays himself forward, crooking his head around the gearshift handle to pillow on the clothes.

Stiles gags him with his own tie, and then pulls the car out. The shift handle bumps at Peter’s shoulder, then clicks into place and Peter groans, pushing back up against it. His shirt-collar peaks up away from his neck and Stiles slips his hand under that, lightly stroking along the bumps of Peter’s spine as they merge into the streets. Then moves up to Peter’s hair, tangling his fingers in the strands before gripping them.

“Close your eyes, Peter,” Stiles tells him.

Peter whimpers around his tie, tensing up, and from the other seat he hears Derek biting back a moan, but he does as he’s told. A band of fabric loops over his head, is tugged down and then pulled tight. Then Stiles’ hand returns to loosely drape over his neck.

“Stop that,” Stiles says. “We’re not going anywhere.”

He shivers, and forces down the whimpers. His back and arms and thighs already are starting to ache, and his tie is soaking up all the spit in his mouth, leaving it dry and unpleasantly cottony. And still, his breathing slows, his muscles begin to relax. He’s not comfortable in the least, but he has no interest in being anywhere but here.

“Good,” Stiles says, petting him, and Peter settles in to wait.


End file.
